Once More unto the Breach
by Paperclippe
Summary: The sequel to Inquisition, Indiana: After ending the first Blight outside of Thedas, all Cullen and Eleanor want is a moment's peace. But when they return to Thedas, they discover there is still much work to be done - and something else is brewing underfoot in Indiana. Something that might change the fabric of reality on both sides of the Rift.
1. Between the Desire and the Spasm

A note on the text:

This is the direct sequel to Inquisition, Indiana, the unbetaed version of which has been posted here in its entirety. The complete, revised version of Inquisition, Indiana is hosted on Archive of Our Own under the same title. If you haven't read that, this won't make much sense.

I am posting the unrevised version of Once More into the Breach here to get feedback on the story until my beta reader can have a proper crack at it, at which point, this too will be posted to Archive of Our Own (there are a few chapters up there already). Again, this is not the finished version of the story; in fact, I'm not even done writing it, but if I don't post it somewhere, there's a good chance I'll never finish it. Talk about a work ethic.

Anyway, I apologize in advance for spelling/grammar/etc errors. I've done my best to look this over but it is the first draft. Thanks in advance for bearing with me!

* * *

 _Here lies the abyss..._

He put his hand on her face, worked his fingers into her hair, the rich, dark brown hair that framed her face, and turned to kiss her forehead, her eyebrows, her eyes.

The early morning was quiet. The sun hadn't even begun to rise. There were no dawn songbirds this time of year, wouldn't be until the wet autumn gave way to the harsh winter, gave way to the wild spring.

 _...the well of all souls…_

And despite the quiet, despite the dark, Cullen was awake. Something in his chest had stirred him, some darkness there that he could not explain and could not ease, could not silence. Eleanor lay peacefully beside him, and he wanted to be close to her, wanted to smell the perfume of her skin, wanted to know the softness of her touch. He wanted her to calm him, but she was fast asleep.

He pressed his lips against her temple and gently breathed her name. Her eyelids fluttered, but she didn't stir. Whatever dream place she was in, it held her fast. Cullen ran his fingers along her brow, pushed little stray hairs away from her cheeks. And yet the feeling in his heart lingered. Cullen sat up and leaned back against the wooden headboard, adjusting his pillow against his back.

Ferelden was always so quiet.

 _From these emerald waters doth life begin anew._

In April, they'd come for a brief stay. They'd come for Evelyn. They'd come to tell the Inquisitor - to tell the Inquisition - that they'd rather return to the quiet midwest, to stay in Indiana. They'd come to say that they would handle work on their end, and would do their due diligence, but that after the Blight, after all the fighting, after all the death, they'd like to step away for a little while. To live a quiet life. To hold down the fort in Eleanor's neck of the woods. The rift between Thedas and Earth was still open,

And yet it was autumn, and here they were still. Evelyn had hosted them at Skyhold for months, and Eleanor had become a force unto herself, relating not just the events of the previous year, but also relaying Dorian's speculations of the Rift, the Fade - and Dorian had gone back to Tevinter to do the same. It had been Cullen who the Inquisition had asked to return, but it was Eleanor who was doing all of the heavy lifting. No wonder she was so deeply asleep.

At least, after a while, they had gotten away from Skyhold. Here, in this little lakeside cabin just outside of Redcliff, they were less than a day's journey from the mountains, from the fortress that Cullen had for so long called home. But they were also painfully close to Kinloch Hold, and though the trauma was ten years and a different administration away, the ex-templar still couldn't help but feel a small shiver when he looked out over the water on grey, windy days.

He had told Eleanor everything about what had happened there. She had held him, and apologized, as though she had had anything to do with it.

 _Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you._

A small light crept through the windows now. Small, and lonely, and pale. Sitting up against the headboard, Cullen pressed his eyes closed. He rested a hand heavily on Eleanor's shoulder, needing to feel her breath, needing to feel the warmth that radiated from her skin. He felt her sigh hard, and she rolled over, reaching for him in a half-sleep.

"I'm here," he whispered, not knowing if she could hear or not.

Her sleep still scared him. No, maybe not as much as scared, but it was a strange sensation to be trained as a templar and to sleep next to a mage, knowing that she had a very different connection to that dream world than he ever could, feeling small bursts of magic ripple out of her skin. Without lyrium, he wasn't as attuned to all of the things he might have been before, but he could still feel the power in her blood, on her body, a sharp, skewed, unreal sensation. It was almost an acrid tang, the smell of the air before a storm, but now it was almost - no, not almost, it really was - comforting.

He didn't care if he woke her now, couldn't care, not with the weight in his chest, the weight pressing into his mind that said something was not right, was not right at all. Cullen reached out and pulled her tightly into his arms, pulled her up and against his chest, pressing his lips hard against her hair, the brown of it black in the slowly growing dawn. She grasped for him in a half sleep and her lips formed his name, but her eyes stayed shut a moment longer, even as her cheek pressed hard against his skin, nuzzling gently against the familiar warmth of his form. Eleanor tipped her head up, arms sleepily snaking around his neck, and she let him kiss her, a soft, broken moan resonating in her throat.

For a moment, her head found his shoulder, and she laid there, twisting her fingers in the small curls at the nape of his neck - hair grown too long these past weeks, he thought, though she didn't seem to mind.

Though there hadn't been a smile on her face, there now flashed a frown, deep, sincere, furrows forming on Eleanor's brow, in heavy creases beside her mouth.

"El," he said. It wasn't a question, but it wanted for so many answers.

He thought he saw her lips form, "No."

There was a trembling of her eyelashes.

"Something…" she breathed.

"Hm?" he said, reaching down to smooth her hair.

"It shouldn't be," she answered.

"Shouldn't be what, El?" Her tongue was still heavy with slumber and a part of his brain didn't think he was hearing her right. Another part was afraid that he was.

"It's waking up," she muttered, her hands still grasping, but now for something very different. Her eyes pulled open, the blue-grey like a stormy ocean in the flat light.

"Love," he said, the word meant to be soothing but tinged with fear, the weight in his chest now a pressing, now the peine forte et dure of the mute, "what are… what are you saying?"

Suddenly her eyes darted around the room, and she pushed one hand hard against Cullen's chest, sitting upright hard and fast. She gripped the blankets in her fist, pulled them to her chest, turned until her gaze met Cullen's in the early morning blue.

"We have to go home."

 _In my arms lies Eternity._


	2. Between the Potency and the Existence

They had first returned to Skyhold in early April, and the air that then had been crisp and cold was now warm and resplendent with the scent of blossoms and a burgeoning summer. Eleanor had thought, living as far out in the country as she did, that she knew what clean air smelled like. She was accustomed to the feel of a fresh breeze on her skin. In the winter, it hadn't been so different. But in the spring, Indiana and Thedas were impossible to compare.

Eleanor walked up the stone steps, Cullen at her side. She breathed in the potent, almost thick air, rich and alive in a way she'd never known. She reached for Cullen's hand and gave it a squeeze, closing her eyes with one last, deep inhale before she strode into the main hall.

The building - the fortress - was just as busy as it had ever been. She'd hardly had a moment to really enjoy it before; her mind had been elsewhere and the few days she had spent at Skyhold were as good as a blur. Stepping through now, she heard so many voices, so many languages, and she wanted simultaneously to open her arms and welcome the multitudes to her and to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible, to be no different from the rest. As a middle ground, she slid her hand up Cullen's arm and gave it a little squeeze. He turned to her and smiled.

Their things had all been stowed away, and Swiffer had been set free. Cullen had been nervous about letting the little cat roam freely around the Frostbacks, but Eleanor trusted the kitten. Swiffer knew where food was. She could find people. She knew Cullen and Dorian and Varric and had even cozied up to the Inquisitor herself during Evelyn's brief stay in Indiana, and though Varric went back and forth between Skyhold and Kirkwall, and Dorian had, since the end of the Blight, gone back to Tevinter, Eleanor knew that Swiffer would never stray far from the people that reminded her of home. She was a smart critter, and moreover, she would never let herself go more than twelve hours without eating a treat.

All they had to do now was tell Evelyn that while they appreciated her offer and would be more than willing to continue to offer their services from the other side of the Breach, they would only be able to stay in Thedas a week or two. A month at the most, and that was only if they felt like traveling, if Eleanor felt like seeing this foreign land.

* * *

Evelyn was in her quarters, sitting behind a big wooden desk. There were quills and papers littering the surface, but the Inquisitor was looking out the large windows, a fingernail tapping against her teeth. When she heard Eleanor and Cullen's footfalls, though, she sat bolt upright, using her arms to push her heavy chair away from the desk.

"Oh, it is so good to see you both," Evelyn said, almost breathlessly, and Cullen offered his hand to the Inquisitor, but it was into Eleanor's open arms that the red-haired woman ran. Eleanor embraced the Inquisitor tightly, and though the few weeks they had spent together were four months gone and blurred by the panic of combat and desperation, it felt instantly like she was in the arms of an old friend.

"How are you finding things?" Evelyn asked, holding Eleanor by the shoulders and leaning back.

"We've, ah, just arrived," Cullen said, dropping his hand with a smile.

"Good, good," Evelyn said, releasing Eleanor and finally grasping for Cullen's hand. "Then I haven't missed anything."

Eleanor laughed. "What's there to miss?"

"Around here," Evelyn answered, "you never know."

The door at the foot of the stairs opened and closed, and the three of them turned to see a woman with a black braid wrapped around her head begin to ascend.

"Inquisitor?" she called.

Eleanor cleared her throat and turned away, lowering her head and turning to face further into the room. She reached over her shoulder and pulled her long hair across her body, fiddling with it anxiously.

"Don't," said Cullen softly, putting a strong hand on Eleanor's shoulder. It was a firm gesture, but one of encouragement.

The memory of Cassandra speaking - and that was a kinder word than the situation had entailed - about Eleanor was when she had walked in on the woman berating Cullen was still fresh in her mind: Cassandra berating Cullen for what she had seen as the commander not putting enough effort into his work, and putting a bit too much, er, effort into Eleanor while Cassandra was struggling to holding up her end in Thedas. Cassandra had apologized, and she had come to Indiana to fight the Archdemon, but Eleanor and Cassandra had never really spoken, and so that first interaction still dominated the few moments that made up their relationship. Rehashing that argument wasn't exactly how Eleanor wanted her visit to Skyhold to start.

"Hello, Cassandra," the Inquisitor called down the stairs as the woman continued her approach. Evelyn tipped her head down and to the side to catch Eleanor's gaze once more. "Have you said hello to our guests?" she said, keeping both eyes fixed on Eleanor, except in the small instant when the Inquisitor gave her a wink.

"Guests?" Cassandra said, huffing and puffing to the top of the stairs. Eleanor got the impression that Cassandra was in fine shape, but that this was just her manner - always out of breath to get somewhere. "I didn't know there were - oh."

Eleanor finally turned now and met the Seeker's brown eyes, or would have, if they hadn't been directed at the floor.

"I knew you both were coming back. I hadn't known that…" Cassandra's voice trailed off.

Eleanor's eyes flicked up to Cullen, but he only crossed his arms and remained speechless. Eleanor gave him a less than subtle shove and said, "Hello, Cassandra." The woman had apologized to Eleanor on the battlefield in the moments before they had brought down the Archdemon, but it had been so rushed, so anxious. Cullen had not been there, had not heard, and made it clear that he was taking this grudge for as far as he could carry it.

There was a moment of stillness, tension radiating from Cassandra, and then the tall woman almost heaved forward with relief.

"Eleanor - Cullen - I am so sorry. I was frustrated, I let my temper get the best of me -" she took three long strides forward and clasped Eleanor's hands, looking back and forth from her to Cullen. "I bear you no ill will. Either of you. I was too harsh and spoke wrongly."

The commander's face remained stern, but Eleanor saw a little twitch at the corner of his lips, and she gave Cassandra's hands a little squeeze.

"We appreciate that, Cassandra," she said, emphasizing the "we" as she released the Seeker's hands and folding her arms easily across her chest.

"It is so good to have you back here," Cassandra went on. "We could use your help. Both of you," she impressed.

"Ah, yes, well, that's the thing..." Cullen said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.


	3. Wonderous Things

They left the Inquisitor's chambers taking long, slow strides. Cullen had his hands on top of his head and was gazing up at the ceiling as he walked.

"Well. That didn't exactly go to plan," he said, making his way back into the hall.

Eleanor sighed. Patting herself down for her cigarettes, suddenly feeling awkward in blue jeans and a light grey sweater instead of the robes and finery like those of everyone around her, she muttered, "It's only a few weeks. They need our help. They weren't there like we were," and she pulled the half-crushed pack out of her back pocket, the lighter stuffed inside. She shook a cigarette out and brought the pack to her lips to free it, then offered one to Cullen.

He lead her out to the steps, and on the first landing he lowered himself slowly down, letting his legs hang over the side, boots scuffing against the stones. He let the cigarette hang limply from his lips as Eleanor joined him, leaning against his side.

"It's not so bad," she offered. "It's nice this time of year."

Cullen made a "hm" sound and stared into some middle distance for a moment before pulling the cigarette away from his lips and saying, "I have lived here for almost forty years, Eleanor. Here, and beyond the mountains, beyond the Waking Sea, you can see where I've spent my entire life. And yet…"

Breathing out a puff of smoke, she answered, "Well, we're here now, Cul. So," she said, looking up at him with blue-grey eyes that reflected the sky, "show me?" As he looked down at her, she went on, "You've seen my home. Or some small part of it. I'm sure you'll see more. But I've never been here before. All I've seen are these castle walls. But even this… I've never seen…" She took a little breath, took a little puff of her cigarette. "There was a man," she began, looking out across the courtyard, "a hundred years ago. He went to Egypt - a place far from Indiana, really far, across the ocean - to find the tomb of an ancient king. They dug and dug and eventually found what they were looking for - this tomb, this intact tomb of the boy king, King Tut. No one had ever found an intact, undisturbed tomb like this before - well, alright, so I guess maybe grave robbers had or else - whatever, that's not the point. Anyway, Howard Carter, this guy, he peeks in with a candle, and his buddy, some lord, asks him, 'Can you see anything?'" Eleanor stood up and turned around to face Skyhold, turned again to face the same mountain view that Cullen faced. "And Howard Carter, he says…" Eleanor's voice slowed, and she looked back down at him, and put out her hand to his. He reached up and took her hand in his, fixing their gaze as she said, "...he says, 'Yes. Wondrous things.'"

* * *

A/N: So first I just want to say thanks - I've had at least three people follow and favorite this story in less than 24 hours. (That's why I'm posting this right now - consider it a gift for being awesome!)

Second, I do just want to say that while this and the next three chapters have been beta-read (that's six out of fifty - FIFTY - and that's just what I've got right now, which is like part one of at least a three-part epic, though epic makes me sound like I think really highly of myself; it's just really long) I am always looking for feedback. I will say upfront that this plot is a lot more twisty-turny than Inquisition, Indiana's was, so bear with me, but definitely speak up if something doesn't make sense. I've got it loosely mapped out in my head but the whole reason I'm even posting the unrevised version is so that this story will be the best it can be once it's done and is a cohesive whole.

And lastly, if you do want to read the beta-read version of Inquisition, Indiana, which is finished, it's up on Archive of Our Own under the same title. I'm only posting it there to avoid double posting or seeming like a review-grabber here.

Thanks again to everyone who's favorited and followed so far! And happy Towel Day, you hoopy froods!


	4. Magical Things

Their first attempt at discussing the Rift did not go well.

Eleanor and Evelyn, with the help of Dorian's painstaking notes and Cullen's input, had put together the best sort of magical and tactical description of the Rift in the Deep Roads that they could without actually knowing what the hell they were dealing with. Dorian's description of the fabric-like nature of things was the foundation of their work, but the both of them - the three of them, really, with Cullen looking on - admitted through looks and gestures that what they had was a grand metaphor without substance. And Dorian's question still nagged at them all: if the Rift was a snag, what was the nail that snagged the thread?

What they did have, however, was experience, as some of the only people who had traversed the Rift - and Eleanor, of course, being the only one in Thedas to hail from the other side. What they also now had was an armed guard posted at the entrance to the cave where their party had emerged from the Deep Roads, as well as several agents scanning the area to see if other cave mouths lead down to the same section of the underground network. While Eleanor didn't fear too many people heading into the Roads from the Indiana side of things - or heading in and surviving - Evelyn wasn't as sure about the Fereldan side.

So they gathered what they knew, and came to a consensus of words, and wrote two copies, one in what Eleanor knew as English, and one in what Evelyn called The King's Tongue, the same almost rune-like hashes and squiggles in which she had seen Cullen write. Her own handwriting looked preposterously irregular and loopy compared to the commander's and the Inquisitor's fine markings, and her unfamiliar use of a stylus and ink was not doing her any favors. As she wrote, Eleanor mulled over the fact that though the three of them could understand one another perfectly, a few odd idioms aside, there was a whole form of communication that she couldn't participate in, that she could not even begin to parse. She supposed maybe it was time to learn, or if not now, then soon.

Their thoughts prepared, the facts, unbelievable though they were, presented in as clear a fashion as they could manage, Evelyn had Josephine and Leliana reach out to their contacts - Leliana had the lion's share, since she was Divine, but Josephine knew and could influence nobility - so that they could present the relevant information about the Rift to the people who should know and would want to know about it.

Evelyn had told Eleanor that many would be mages, who would undoubtedly have questions about Eleanor, not the least of which would be directed at her very abilities themselves.

"Try not to get too caught up in the politics of it," Evelyn had said, and from the corner of the room Cullen scoffed. He didn't even look up from his papers as he added, "Right, because that always worked for you."

Josephine had wanted them to meet in the great hall, but Evelyn shot the idea down. She was not sitting in judgment, and had sat on that throne all too many times for all too dark reasons. In fact, Evelyn suggested, why not have it in the garden? It would show a different side of the Inquisition: a quiet one, a calm one, and would show off their resources as opposed to their might; the Inquisitor wasn't too big on might these days. Reluctantly, Josephine agreed, and chairs were set up between pots of elfroot and embrium, and Evelyn and Eleanor and Cullen took their places in front of the well.

Eleanor leaned against the ancient stones as Evelyn spoke, making Eleanor's introduction as she explained to those gathered what they were about to hear. The Inquisitor had dressed Eleanor in a soft grey robe. It puckered at the left side of her neck and draped down in an asymmetrical cowl. There was a silvery-blue belt at her waist and soft black boots on her feet. Eleanor's chestnut hair was down, pulled over her shoulder and secured with a little silver clip at her right ear.

It still took Cullen off guard, still made his breath catch when he saw her this way. Surprise wasn't the right word, and it wasn't that he found her more attractive - or less. He loved his rough and tumble farm girl, his practical, uncut gem of a woman. And he knew what she was, knew she was a mage, knew she had the right to wear those robes. Yet, even here, especially here, it took him aback to see her this way. She now fit as though she was a part of the world that he had known for so long, as though this was her world as well as his own, but it made her seem less the woman that he had met on a hot June day in Indiana. No, not less, never less, but with more of something else mixed in.

Whatever the reason, whatever the result, Cullen couldn't take his eyes off of her, couldn't wipe the look that had slowly turned into an oafish grin off of his face.

"This is Eleanor Redgrove, of Indiana," Evelyn was saying, as Cullen looked on. It still made Eleanor chuckle to hear Indiana said that way, like it was some mighty and powerful kingdom and not the place everyone drove through to get to Chicago, a lonely little fly-over state. "She is our ambassador and liaison from the other side of the Deep Roads Rift. Whatever you may have heard about her, I ask that you hold your questions until the end. Trust me, it won't be long. We don't have much, unfortunately. That's why I've gathered you all here. Rift magic as a body of knowledge grew quickly after the Breaches first opened, thanks to those mages and scholars who dedicated themselves to studying them from the very outset, from the very moment that the first Breach tore open the sky. And while we here were desperately trying to close those Breaches -" there was a little whoop from the crowd, but Evelyn put up her hands to quickly quash it "- they were trying to study those very rifts, often at their own peril." Evelyn paused for a moment and clasped her hands together, right thumb rubbing her left palm almost nervously. She paced left and right for a moment before speaking again. "The truth is, we don't know if this is the same magic or not. We don't even know if it's what we can identify as magic. But we've got some ideas, thanks to Lady Redgrove and Commander Rutherford, as well as the work of Dorian Pavus, and Varric Tethras who wished to remain nameless but will get no such luxury from me." A small laugh rippled through the assembled crowd; Evelyn had done this before and she was good at it. "The truth is, we have maybe a coherent series of thoughts between the five of us. That's why we asked you here today, instead of sending missives. So that we could talk. So that you could ask questions. So that maybe together, we could come up with something more than that. Because that would be a blasted sight better than what we've got right now." Evelyn stopped, stood up straight, and folded her hands behind her back. "Alright, Eleanor, would you like to speak?"

Eleanor blinked a bit and stood up straighter, not realizing her turn would come so soon. She shuffled the papers in her hands and the Inquisitor stepped back, allowing Eleanor her place.

Her stance seemed nervous, Cullen noticed, feet close together and shoulders forward as she looked down quickly at her first two pages of notes. But Eleanor cleared her throat, threw her hair back over her shoulder, and rolled her neck.

"Hello, folks," she said, and her words weren't nervous at all. "Thanks for coming. I can only assume it was a long way. Everything seems to be a long way away from everything else around here." She got the same peel of laughter that Evelyn had received, and the Inquisitor noticed, nudging Cullen gently on the arm and giving him an approving smile.

"So, I don't know how much you all are familiar with, so I guess I'll start at the beginning. As you do. We - that's to say, the commander, Dorian, Varric, and myself, first discovered the Deep Roads Rift while exploring the ravine in Indiana - which I understand we're now calling the Theodosian Ravine? Alright, that'll do. We went in to gather information about the ravine, since so much was still unknown at that point - we certainly didn't know how massive the network was; at that point we couldn't even be sure of the depth. Cull - er, that is to say, Commander Rutherford has more details on the specifics but after quite a long walk the four of us experienced what I can only describe as a shimmer. A shiver. Something changed. We had kind of a lot on our minds at the time, as you can imagine -" another little chuckle from the small audience "- so at the time it was just one more thing to add on the pile of weird that had been the last few months, especially for me, as I'm sure many of you know. Regardless, when we passed through, we must have - well, we did - come over to Thedas. We were in what Varric immediately recognized as the Deep Roads. When the exit of the cave system let us out into Ferelden, near Redcliff, that was when we finally caught on. Again, we were a little busy at the time. Ah, so… yes." Eleanor flipped some pages.

"It was Dorian who did a lot of this heavy lifting, I do want to be clear about that. He couldn't be here today, but he was the one delving deep where I couldn't even scratch the surface. With all that said, here's what we think we know. We think the Rift in the Veil is a permanent feature. We think it has always been there."

There was some hushed murmurs from those seated. A young man in the front row turned to his companion and whispered something in her ear, and the woman nodded.

Cullen saw Eleanor pause, and she swiveled her head to glance at Evelyn nervously. Slowly, almost cautiously, the Inquisitor bade her continue.

"We… we think that for a long time the way between the worlds was open, and remnants of that connection remain. The fact that I can speak to you right now is one. That…" she hesitated, and Cullen knew what she was about to say. "That I am a mage is another."

The shiver in the crowd grew louder.

"Now," Eleanor said, trying to get the whole thing back on track, "I'm not as well-versed on this as all of you -"

"Then why should we listen to you, mage?" The man in the front row stood up. His skin was pale and his eyes burnt deep into Eleanor's.

"Uh, well, I…" she faltered. "We worked on this together…"

"Together? Yes, together," the word was venom. "Three mages: one a Tevinter magister, one a supporter of the Mage Rebellion and the head of this illegitimate organization, and you, a know-nothing from a world whose Blight threatened our own. I say again, three mages, a dwarf, and a disgraced templar," the man accused, pointing his finger as he spoke.

Cullen stepped forward. His sword was on the belt around his waist and he rested his hand on it, in a way that both showed he was choosing not to draw it and was a threat in kind. Evelyn put her hand on Eleanor's arm and answered the man, ignoring his insults.

"If not mages," she asked, "then who would you like to speak of magical things? If not the people who explored the Deep Roads, who would you like to speak of what they hold?"

"Your authority -"

"My authority has been challenged many times, serrah. And yet, here I stand." As she spoke, the crowd continued to grow more restless. "Now, would you like to let the lady speak?" Evelyn's eyes scanned the far garden walls, where Eleanor saw two archers raise their bowes. "Others may like to know what she has to say. It is, indeed, why we are here today."

The woman to whom the man had whispered stood now and took a step forward. Her accent was Orlesian, like Leliana's, though the man's was not. "We have heard enough from mages these past ten years! Indeed, we have heard enough from mages and outsiders to last us until the end of time." Though the crowd was small, the din grew nearly overwhelming now and Eleanor took a step back, but Evelyn kept her reassuring fingers tight on Eleanor's wrist. The Inquisitor gave her a look, stern but strong, that told Eleanor to remain calm.

And calm she could remain, but there was a rage welling up in her chest that made her fists ball. Who was this man - and more, who was he to tell her not to speak? And because she was a mage? Her eyes narrowed and she pulled her lip between her teeth, starting to move forward again, but Cullen cut her off with a small whisper of, "Don't, El."

"But -"

"Not now."

"Ah, the templar speaks," the man said. "And he still restrains mages, it seems."

"Keep talking and I won't," Cullen challenged, taking two quick steps forward.

"Then let her go," the woman said, drawing a dagger and thrusting it toward Eleanor. Eleanor flinched back, but held her ground even as her heart began to race.

"Enough!" Evelyn shouted, flinging her arms wide. "Enough." The crowd quieted, and though the woman did not yield, nor did the man reclaim his seat, they made no further movements, and Cullen retreated to Eleanor's side. "I will not have this. You are all of you dismissed."

"Oh, all of us, Inquisitor?" the man spat Evelyn's title as an insult.

Evelyn's face remained stony. "Yes. All of you. Unless you would like to have it some other way? The Inquisition is not in the habit of taking prisoners any longer, but I'm certain we can make an exception."

The woman narrowed her eyes and held her dagger firm.

"Did you not hear me?" Evelyn said again to the small crowd. "I said dismissed. The guards will see you out," it was both an offer and a threat to those who might be inclined to stay.

Cautiously, the audience began to rise, to leave the little garden sanctuary. A few craned their necks to keep an eye on the action but all proceeded slowly away, except for the man and woman who had challenged them.

Evelyn frowned, shaking her head. "Don't tempt me," she said, turning away with a wave of her hand that told the two what she thought of them.

And then the man sprang, a knife in his own hand, and he leapt not for Eleanor, but for Evelyn. Cullen drew his sword and charged forward, but Eleanor was closer, and her magic was faster. Striking out with an open palm, she froze the man solid, stopping him in his tracks, and with a sweep of the other hand, she erected a wall of ice between the woman and herself. From across the garden, the stretching of bowstrings alerted Cullen.

"Archers - hold!" he called, and put a hand on Eleanor's shoulder as he moved past her, moved past her frozen barricade, and knocked the still outstretched dagger from the woman's hand with the flat of his sword. The look on her face had quickly gone from enraged to frightened to terrified as Cullen put the point of his sword under her chin.

"You had your chance," he told her in a growl. "Take them away," he called to the guards. "Leave them in the cells to rot. Or to thaw, as the case may be."


	5. Dangerous Things

"Are you alright, Inquisitor?" Cullen asked as they walked quickly away from the garden.

"Commander, I'm fine. It was my own fault for turning my back on someone armed. I honestly didn't think…" she shook her head. "But Eleanor did a fine job," and Evelyn turned around and gave her a wink.

Eleanor was hanging back, following them almost cautiously, feeling more than a bit like she had overstepped her bounds, and that maybe using magic to freeze a mage-hating assailant might not have been the most forward-thinking strategy.

"Yes, well," Eleanor heard Cullen say as they pushed their way toward the War Room.

"She did, Cullen," Evelyn leaned toward him, and Eleanor wasn't sure she was supposed to hear the Inquisitor say, "and you should maybe tell her so. Seeing as how she was the first one they drew a knife on."

Evelyn continued walking, but Cullen stopped, and turned back around to face Eleanor, looking at first a little embarrassed, and then a little ashamed. Eleanor was hunched forward a bit, her hair in her hands, but she looked up at him and gave him a crooked smile that said it was alright. His eyebrows knitted and he walked back toward her, putting his hands on her arms and giving them a squeeze.

"Ah, El… I am sorry. I'm not very good at this, am I?"

She let herself lean forward a bit to rest her cheek lightly against his chest, just on the spot above his armor where she could still feel the warmth of him.

"You're fine," she said softly.

"Are… are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, laughing a little now. "Everything's fine, Cullen. Come on. Evelyn's left us behind."

"We have to find out who those two were - who sent them," Cassandra insisted, pounding her fist on the war table.

"We could try asking them," Josephine offered. "We do have them locked up."

Cassandra looked at the Antivan woman like she was speaking a foreign language. "Do you think they will just tell us? Certainly not!"

"They might," Cullen admitted, leaning over the war table as though it could offer him some insight. "They did expose themselves in a public arena. They wanted to be seen."

"Yes, well, in the heat of the moment, I didn't exactly think to ask," Evelyn admitted, one hand rubbing the back of her neck, the other clasped at her elbow.

"They seemed to know exactly enough about me to hate me," Eleanor said, leaning up against the wall by the windows.

"You're a mage," Cullen said, "you'll have that. That's all some people need to know." He looked up at her and his smile asked for forgiveness.

"The commander is right," Josephine said, "unfortunately. It happened when the Breaches were first opened - of course, their being opened right at the time of the Conclave didn't exactly ease matters."

"The Conclave?" Eleanor asked.

All heads turned toward her.

"Sorry, I kind of came in at the middle of this," she muttered.

"Ah, yes, of course," Cullen said, standing up. "I think Dorian told you about the Circles and the Rebellion - though his perspective might be a little… never mind. The Conclave was an assembly between the rebel mages and the Templar Order to try and come to some kind of agreement. That was when Corypheus first struck."

"It's when I got the Anchor," Evelyn added, flexing her hand.

"People have always been afraid of mages for little reason," Josephine went on, looking up from her notes, "but it was very much exacerbated around the time of the Conclave, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were to happen again now."

"Yes, well, at least the immediate threat has already been taken care of this time," Cullen said, stretching his back.

"But it does make sense," Cassandra added. "With the added… complication of you being from the other side of the Rift, Eleanor, it only makes sense that there would be people who might be suspicious of your intentions."

"What it does not explain is why they came here in an organized group, today of all days," Josephine wondered aloud.

"You call that organized? They seemed like obstinate children," Cullen countered.

"Well, whatever the case, they came here today for a reason," she said, looking down at her board as though her notes would give her some answers.

"I mean…" Eleanor said, looking out the window, her arms folded in front of her.

"Hm?" Evelyn said, walking slowly towards her.

Eleanor shrugged. "Maybe we invited them."

Josephine had departed, promising frantically that she would contact Leliana and go over every single invitation they had sent. Cassandra was going to take the more direct route and head down to the cells herself. Cullen left the War Room with Eleanor, walking past Josephine who was quickly writing already, and making for the great hall. When they opened the door, a tiny grey furball mrooped under foot.

"Oh hey baby," Eleanor said, reaching down and scooping the cat up into her arms. The little creature almost blended in with Eleanor's robes, and the kitten seemed pleased by this, snuggling deeper against Eleanor and pawing gently at the fabric.

Cullen looked down at the pair of them and smiled, feeling a tiny bit like he was home, with these two here with him, but as he heard as much as saw Cassandra storming away, the small illusion was gone - yet, then again, if this wasn't home, then what was? This was the life he had always known, and Eleanor was at least here with him. Nevertheless, it wasn't the respite he wanted for himself, or for her. He reached out and slung his arm across Eleanor's shoulders, pulling her in close.

"This was supposed to be a holiday," he said to her, as they walked in step across the stone floor. "And I feel like for a holiday, it's going rather poorly."

Eleanor only shook her head and smiled. "We knew there would be work to do," nuzzling the cat a bit, she added, "didn't we, sweetheart?" Turning back to Cullen, she said, "And I'm glad I can be here to help. But how about we take a break? Take the rest of the day off? Save anymore

dangerous things for tomorrow?"

"I could get behind that," Cullen answered.

"Excellent," Eleanor said as they descended the steps. "Because I'm starving."

* * *

A/N: Speaking of holidays, here. Have an extra one since I have plenty of time to sit at home and write over the long weekend.


	6. Take You Away

Eleanor went to change her clothes; for as beautiful as her new robes were, there was something to be said for a flannel and a pair of leggings. The boots she kept on, though, understanding now why Cullen had never traded his well-worn pair in for a new pair back home; these couldn't be beat. Cullen stripped off his armor but kept on his uniform - a uniform of his own devising, to be fair, but it was something he felt like himself in, at least while on this side of the Rift. It was the first time he had been able to choose his own attire after a life with the Templar Order, and the outfit had simply stuck. It made him feel good to have some kind of uniform, not just because of his rank, but because it was one less thing to worry about, and it had come to be an extension of himself. It didn't stop him, however, from appreciating the decidedly un-Theodosian comforts of a beat-up t-shirt, or the soothing toxicity of how many dozens of stolen cigarettes.

He smoked one now as he looked over his bookshelf, and the stack on the floor that had become an extension of the storage unit, bending down to pick up a little green volume. Cigarette pursed between his lips, he flipped the the book open, thumbing through a few pages until a wrinkled and folded scrap of paper fell out. Tossing the book aside with a thump, he stood up straight and unfolded the paper, pulling the cigarette from his lips and holding it carefully between his index and middle finger.

"'Dear Mia, I'm still alive. Your loving brother, Cullen.'"

He spoke the words softly, a little grin creeping across his face as he read. He shook his head. "Mia. I am a terrible brother," he sighed, but there was a kindness towards himself in his words, a kindness mixed with regret. He should write her tonight. Would write her tonight. Would tell her about Indiana and the Blight and the last year… and Eleanor. Would have to tell her about Eleanor. He was already prepared for the teasing; no matter that they were adults, he could always count on Mia to treat him like a little brother. And he was, he supposed, and would always be her little brother. Even if he hadn't written to her in more than a year. Nearly two. Flames, he was a terrible brother.

"Interesting reading?" Eleanor said, descending the ladder in small hops, not quite daring to slide the whole way down. The wood had been worn shiny and smooth by years of use and no longer offered much in the way of traction.

Cullen waved the parchment like a small flag and said, "Letter from my sister. Ages ago. She chided me then and chides me now."

"Maybe we can take it in shifts," Eleanor said, standing on tip-toe and reaching up to wrap her arms around Cullen's neck. He held his own arms out to the side to give her space, and then held her tightly with his wrists, fingers on both hands already occupied.

"Please don't," he said, turning his cheek to receive a kiss. Eleanor obliged and let him go, allowing him to set the paper down on his desk. He'd been here just nearly two weeks and it was already a mess, but he put the note in a visible place. He really did mean to write. But then, he always really did.

"Alright, well, Swiffer is fed. Now it's my turn. Let's go see what we can scrounge up."

They walked to the Herald's Rest, deciding that if they were going to take a break, then they were going to do it properly, and that meant drinks were in order. Cullen didn't exactly have a proper place to have a meal in private in his quarters, the memory of pushing books and scrolls aside to reach his dinner all too fresh in his mind, and he didn't see fit to impose that on Eleanor. They had been eating with the Inquisitor most evenings, but it wasn't a permanent solution.

It occurred to Cullen that if they stayed here any longer they might actually need a place to live.

Together.

He looked down at Eleanor as they walked slowly along the battlements, her hands tucked under her arms, little coils of hair loosed from her braid, and tried to figure out why the thought gave him any pause at all. They'd been living together for nearly a year, hadn't they? He'd even moved his things into her room before they'd fought the Archdemon, and once everyone else had headed off back to Thedas, he'd been there alone with her for more than a month while they sorted and packed.

But it still felt like her house, like he was living in a borrowed place - a borrowed place he was quite happy to hang on to, albeit, but it was Eleanor's home, Eleanor's space, and he had taken up residence there first as a near necessity. He hadn't really had time to think about it, and hadn't been in the mindset of living together when he had first taken that little upstairs room. He was more worried that the Blight, and by extension himself, there to stop the Blight, were encroaching on her space. Not sharing it. Maybe it was time to cease those worries - indeed, if it had ever been time to have them - and move on to whatever was next for them. Together.

"Ground control to Commander Cullen?" Eleanor asked, tipping her head to the side to look up at him.

"Hm? I'm sorry, my love."

Eleanor never ceased to be amazed by the man's capacity to get lost in thought. One moment he was there, and the next, he was miles away. "I asked, do you wanna go in through the front doors, or sneak in up here?"

"I would say we should sneak, but they're going to see us either way."

"Few minutes more peace and quiet, though," Eleanor offered.

"Indeed," Cullen said, and went to the door straight ahead, holding it open to allow her entrance. "My lady," he said with a little bow.

"You save that for Evelyn," she said with a small nudge to his chest as she walked past. He laughed quietly as he pulled the door shut behind them.

They sat at a quiet little table in the corner, as far away from noise and eyes as they could. They weren't as much of a spectacle as they had been when they'd first returned from Indiana, the commander with his stories of valor and bravery - or so people had the impression, Cullen had the suspicion, thanks in no small part to a certain dwarf - and Eleanor, the strange and exotic one-of-a-kind mage from a land no one had heard of or seen. But there was enough of a buzz that even now people turned their heads and whispered behind their hands, much as they had with Evelyn for years. Some still did.

Cullen left Eleanor while he went downstairs to see what he could get for them, and she sat, staring out the window as the light faded over Thedas.

These two weeks had given her some small insight into what Cullen must have felt when he had been - been what, stuck? - in Indiana. There were just enough similarities to make her feel like she hadn't gone very far: sitting in a bar, about to have a beer, staring out the window at a sunset that reminded her of trips through Tennessee, or West Virginia, except that if she thought about it too long, the landscape seemed much older, much more wild - and by rights, it was. There were dragons and monsters and magic on those mountains, in those forests, and if she turned her head she could see not just people of different colors, of different nationalities, but of different races, races unlike what she understood as race, elves and dwarves and Qunari. And here she was now, with a power in her blood that belonged more in this world than her own, and yet still didn't seem to belong, didn't belong with any kind of safety or security or peace. Eleanor felt like she was torn between both worlds and yet not really a part of either, little parts of her pulling and pushing, and never at the same time or at the same direction.

At least she had Cullen, she thought, even if he was a symptom, a side effect, of this whole wild journey. At least she was not entirely alone. She hadn't thought of herself that way before; though she was by herself on that great big acreage, she had never really thought about the absence of others, of any other, as a part that was missing, as a void. It was just a fact. She was by herself, and that was fine. But now, after the past year, when she thought about herself back on the farm, if she thought of herself without him, she attached the word "alone" to it. And she didn't want to be alone. It was a good thought, and a sad one: a small loss of her independence but in service of something greater, something she felt was greater, anyway, and maybe that's what it came down to. Maybe Cullen had been, or was still, what she needed to help her find her way through all of this… this…

"Eleanor?"

She picked up her head and found Cassandra standing over her. Eleanor lifted her eyebrows, a little surprised, and reached out to pull out the seat next to her, offering it to the Seeker. Cassandra seemed confused for a moment, almost off put by the gesture, until she realized that Eleanor meant the gesture sincerely, and slowly, the tall woman took a seat.

"I wanted to say…" she began, but seemed hesitant, overly careful in choosing her words, and instead chose none at all, instead making a little disgusted noise and leaning forward, putting her hands on her head.

Eleanor just smiled gently, reaching out to touch Cassandra on the elbow. The Seeker turned her head to look at Eleanor, and Eleanor gave a little wave, tipping her head slightly to the side to meet Cassandra's rich brown eyes.

"That is exactly what I mean," Cassandra said, picking up her head again, turning in her seat to face Eleanor more evenly. Eleanor didn't interrupt, only adjusted the collar of her shirt and leaned on an elbow as she waited for Cassandra to go on. "I won't pretend that I was ever incredibly close to the commander. But he did trust me with his… You know that as a templar, he took lyrium for some years?" Eleanor nodded, and Cassandra went on. "When he joined the Inquisition, he gave up that life and stopped taking the lyrium."

Cullen had told her some of this, in more rushed, almost panicked words, the night he had come seeking some kind of solace from her after their first all-too-close encounter with the darkspawn on Eleanor's farm. He had sat on the edge of her bed, shaking, and she had offered him a cigarette, and he had put his hand on her cheek. There had been other small moments, moments when he seemed suddenly lost, not in thought but without it, and she wondered if there were something more behind those moments than just an occasional spaciness on Cullen's part, or his occasional uncalled for snaps of anger that seemed out of character for a man of his temperament. But he had never volunteered any more information after that night, and she had never asked, sensing that it was something that he would rather forget.

"Stopping lyrium," Cassandra went on, her voice a little softer now, "is not an easy process for anyone. You… well, I suppose you would have heard it; the song, some call it. After twenty years of that call, the commander stopped. And he entrusted me to make sure that… that he was rational in the weeks and months after he ceased its ingestion. He did… he did well, if such a thing is not both an over and an understatement."

Cassandra quieted and folded her hands, looking out the same window Eleanor had been glancing out only moments ago. She took in a deep breath and her shoulders rose and fell. "After he stopped… after it stopped affecting him, he seemed better than before. Clearer. Happier. There were side effects, of course, even years later, but from what little I knew of him in Kirkwall… Perhaps it's my own perspective. Or perhaps what happened to him in the Free Marches was enough to darken him as a person for a very long time." Cassandra rolled her eyes and pushed her chair away slightly. "What I am trying to say is, I thought I knew what Cullen looked like when he was happy. Healthy. But now…" Unexpectedly, she reached out and put one long-fingered hand on top of Eleanor's. "You suit him, Eleanor."

Eleanor didn't know how to respond. Those last, simple words took Eleanor entirely off guard. Cassandra had never spoken to her this way, didn't seem the type to speak to anyone this way. Eleanor reached out with her other hand and placed it on top of the one of Cassandra's that had folded over her own and gave the woman's strong fingers a little squeeze, for lack of anything else to do.

"Thank you, Cassandra," she said slowly, letting her hands slip away. "That - it means a lot."

Cassandra smiled a brief smile, gone in a flash, but it was so sincere and so warm that Eleanor felt as though she had been caught up in the quickest but most sincere hug she had ever known.

"Seeker," Cullen said, catching sight of the two women sitting together as he as ascended the stairs, laden with a tray full of food and drink, "everything alright?"

"I do believe so, Commander." Cassandra said, and stood, pushing in her chair, but not looking away from Eleanor. "Everything seems as though it will be just fine." She clasped her hands at her waist and with a small nod of her head bid Eleanor adieu.

Cullen set the heavy tray down on the table in front of Eleanor and took a seat opposite her, his chair screeching a bit as he pulled it out, sitting down heavily as he asked, "What was all that about?"

Eleanor shook her head, but even as she did, she couldn't help but see Cullen, this ex-Templar, this Commander of the Inquisition, in a slightly different light. From the moment she'd seen him, she'd thought him strong. The more she'd come to terms with his presence, the more she knew that his strength was a strength of body and mind. The more she'd loved him, the more she'd been willing to allow him to be strong for her. But there was more to him than that. There was a flexibility in him that she had known in him when he had adapted to a world that was nothing like his own, and she'd admired it. It was one of many qualities about him that she found herself fond of, though she could name others by the dozens. Eleanor knew now though that he had not only the flexibility to change when forced to, the way he had when he had had to defend her home from the Blight, but had also the resilience to force himself to change, to bend and not to break of his own accord, to make himself better, to better help the cause that he believed in - and to shed the remnants of something that had clearly caused him grief, despite the experience that he had garnered from it. It was an intrinsic quality in most people, regardless of what world they were from, Eleanor thought, to fight change. She was certainly guilty of it herself. But this staunch, stoic, firm man, this commander, had welcomed change in so many ways, had embraced it, and now sat before her with a smile on his face, raising a glass of beer to his lips with just enough space between his mouth and the mug to say, "And you accuse me of getting lost in my own head."

"Guilty as charged," she said, reaching for a still-warm loaf of bread.

"Looks like I'm going to have to take you away."

"I do believe you already have," she said, and grinned a little grin as he nudged her foot with his from beneath the table.

* * *

A/N: So I've gotten a lot more support for this in the last twelve hours than I ever thought I would, so I'm gonna share it with you guys, too: I started a parody Twitter feed telling the story of Dragon Age: II in the style of Pacific Northwest Stories (Tanis/The Black Tapes/Rabbits). If that's something you might be interested in, check it out SFMStories. It's really goofy, I promise.

And if you're not listening to the PNWS/PRA podcasts, what are you even doing with your life?


	7. Never Let It be Said

Eleanor had woken up to find the space in the bed next to her already unoccupied. Cullen often woke up beforehand, but usually made a great racket downstairs while he got himself in order. This morning, however, she heard nothing, and so slowly pulled herself out of bed and dressed. She couldn't be quite sure what time it was - indeed, Theodosians seemed to do things quite differently when it came to exact times, which was to say, not at all - but judging by the way the yellow sun came in through the windows, she assumed that it must be mid-morning. Even upright and awake, their little tower had seemed too quiet, and so she had decided to go looking for Cullen. Right after a bath. And a cup of tea.

What she wouldn't have given for coffee, Eleanor thought, as she leaned up against a table in the kitchen, trying to stay out of the way of the staff as she clung to a warm mug full of spiced brew. Rubbing grit from her eyes despite her bath, Eleanor almost didn't see Evelyn walk past to steal a few apples and most of a loaf of bread.

"Morning, Ellie," the Inquisitor said, raising the loaf in salutation.

"Mm," Eleanor answered around a mouthful of tea, lifting her own cup to flag Evelyn over to her while. "Have you seen Cullen this morning?"

The Inquisitor slowly tipped her head, thinking as she tucked her bread under her arm to better balance the apples. She started to reply, but then caught herself, saying, "I think I saw him out near the garden? Maybe after yesterday…" she moved her occupied hands in small circles to indicate all that had happened. "If I see him before you do, I'll tell him you've been looking."

"Thanks, Ev," Eleanor answered, and the Inquisitor left as Eleanor slowly finished her tea. Looking around helplessly for a sink to put the cup in, a Dalish woman rolled her eyes and took the cup from Eleanor before shooing her out of the kitchen. Eleanor happily obliged.

She hadn't remembered to bring her own clothes down to the baths while in her sleepy haze, so she'd been dressed in more Theodosian things: beige and silver robes and soft beige shoes, and her hair had been piled up on her head in a way that gave the impression that she had ever had it cut or shaped in a way that was not just to get it out of her eyes. The clothes were beautiful, and the fabric was soft and light for the warm spring day, but the robe was a bit too long - or at least a bit too long for Eleanor's taste - and they dusted the floor with every step and made a gentle scraping noise as they dragged along the stones, small beads and delicate embroidery catching against the uneven surface, and making a twinkling sound when the folds of the robes rubbed together. Eleanor had rolled up the bell-like sleeves and was considering hiking up the train or rolling the waist and tucking it in, but she was already making her way alongside the garden and with the sun and the sound of the birds around her, she grew a little less annoyed with every step, and the dainty jingling of her metal belt distracting her as she peered among the trees and elfroot was almost charming. But through the vines and leaves, she saw no sign of Cullen.

She heard his voice before she realized where it was coming from, indeed, before she even realized that it was him. It was a low muttering at first, a slow soothing sound, and she found herself drawn toward it before she even became aware of from where it was coming. There was a door some feet ahead, open just a crack, and in she slowly peered.

Candles were burning, their soft light warm and soothing even despite the sunlight that was filtering in through a high, narrow window. At the far end of the room were low steps that lead up to a wide platform, and on it was a tall statue of a woman, her arms open wide to the sun, to the sky. Kneeling before the statue was Cullen, his head bowed, soft, rhythmic words leaving his lips.

"Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just."

Eleanor tipped her head, trying not to make noise as she slowly pushed the door open just enough to allow herself inside.

"Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood the Maker's will -"

Eleanor flinched as the tiny glass beads of her robes rasped on the stone, the sound echoing off of the rounded walls of the chapel and sounding a hundred times louder than it had on the garden path alone.

Cullen rose halfway and turned around, one hand resting on his knee for balance. "El?"

Discovered, Eleanor gave him a small smile and entered the chapel, pushing the door shut behind her, the beads on the robe seeming a little more quiet now that they had given her up. "Sorry, handsome," she said, her voice quiet in the hushed atmosphere of the room, "Didn't mean to interrupt." She went to him and sat on the top stair so that he didn't have to stand, leaving a good amount of space between them. Cullen reached out, though, and took her hand, bringing her fingers gently to his lips. "You look beautiful," he said quietly, pressing her palm to his cheek, then holding it against his chest.

A moment of silence passed between them, and Eleanor looked up at the statue. Andraste, she figured, it must be. It wasn't exactly the way she had thought the woman would be depicted; it seemed… rough, somehow. Archaic. But at the same time it seemed honest, a lot more honest than the Western religious art she was used to seeing seemed to be. This seemed more of a people's symbol, instead of the overwrought, overly perfect carvings she brought to mind. And though it seemed almost simple, almost unfinished, it was warm somehow. Welcoming.

"Do you…" Eleanor began carefully, not taking her gaze away from Andraste, "do you pray often?" She had never seen him pray, or not in any way that could be identified as prayer. Though Eleanor was used to being up with the sun, Cullen was often awake in the small hours of the morning, well before she was, to practice with his sword, doing drills despite being the only soldier of his army anywhere in Indiana. Maybe on those quiet, dark mornings, he also bent a knee for his god.

"Not as often as I should," Cullen said quietly, letting his hands, still holding Eleanor's, drop a bit so that they rested comfortably on his knee. She didn't withdraw, enjoying the comfort and warmth of Cullen's rough skin.

"You do - you believe, then?" Eleanor's voice was barely above a whisper, as though her doubting might offend the statue in some way.

He nodded slowly. "I do. I - perhaps not all of it." She felt him sigh, the pulling of his hand slightly away then slipping back towards her as his chest rose and fell. "I do."

Eleanor wasn't much for church. Her family never had been. To her knowledge, she hadn't even been baptised, and she didn't really care. They had done Easter, they did Christmas, but they did them in the same way as they had done Halloween and Valentine's Day: no saints or souls to speak of. Hell, once or twice they'd even put aside eight days to light a menorah for Hanukkah, probably in a parental attempt to keep Eleanor's worldview broad - and quietly she thanked them for that, now more than ever. But she had only known holidays as family events or parties, never as moments of great spiritual import. And here she was in a little chapel, sitting on stone steps before a foreigner's god - though wasn't she the foreigner here? - and of all the things he had seen and done, and all the tales she had heard and heard him tell, he believed. Eleanor gave a glance to Cullen, then looked back up at the stone woman towering over them before adjusting her robes with her free hand, finding a soft, less beaded patch on which to rest her knees, before kneeling down beside him, keeping her left hand in both of his.

"El, you don't have to -"

But she cut him off with a little nudge of her shoulder against his, and silently lowered her head. She didn't know what to think or say, didn't even know how to pray, really, but after a pause, Cullen did it for her.

"And the Maker, clad in the majesty of the sky, set foot to earth, and at His touch all warring ceased. The vicious beasts lay down and were quieted; the meek lambs became bold and rose up, casting aside their shepherds to dance at the Maker's feet.  
"From every corner of the earth the Chant of Light echoed, and the Maker…" Cullen's voice slowed, softened, and he let his left hand drop to his side, but twined the fingers of his right between the ones on her left, giving her hand a squeeze before he said, "...and the Maker walked the land with Andraste at His right hand."

Eleanor picked up her head and turned to Cullen, and he looked at her and gave her that crooked smile, that little amused look with the right-hand corner of his lips pulled up, and if she hadn't known him better she might have thought he looked almost smug. But she did know him, and knew him well, and she knew that look was one of gentle delight, his brown eyes lightened, lifted by his joy. Her own mouth turned up in response, but her smile was broad, wide, her lips almost turning down in the middle before they turned up at the edges again.

She saw his gaze dart down before it met hers once more, and when it did there was something else behind it, something hesitant but firm.

"Cul -" she began, but before she could get any further he pressed his lips to her, pulling her into a deep, wanting kiss.

"Good morning to you, too," she said when he pulled away, his lips still barely an inch from hers.

"El, I've been thinking," he said, staying close to her, keeping her hand in his.

"About…?" she asked, stretching out the vowel sound, making it dip in middle.

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment, pursing his lips quickly, before making himself relax again. For a moment he let her fingers go, pushing down on his knee to rise, to stand, and he reached down to help her up as well. Eleanor smoothed her robes before he reached out to her once more, taking each of her hands in his own.

"You've said… I know you've said you're not… perhaps not interested in marriage."

Eleanor turned her head to the side and leaned back a bit, glancing at him longways out of the corner of her eye. "Cullen," she said his name slowly, "what's happening right now?"

He exhaled a small laugh that came out more like a nervous puff of air and shook his head. "Eleanor. I would never want you to - but - what I'm trying to say is, I love you. I don't want to do this without you."

"What… exactly… do you mean by 'this?'" she narrowed her eyes.

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, dropping her right hand to run his his fingers nervously over his hair, the back of his neck, before letting his arm fall heavily. "This. All of this. Any of this. I want… to be with you. Always. If you will have me."

Eleanor blinked, her lips parting slowly, and she looked up and away, forehead creased deeply. "Cullen, I - I…" Her eyes found their way back to his, and she saw a heavy concern there before he spoke.

"Yes - well, I don't mean - you don't have to answer -"

"Of course I will," she said with a laugh, taking his hand back.

"You… will?"

"Cullen, come on. Did you think I would say no?" she grinned.

"You had said…"

She reached out and took him by the elbows, pulling him a little closer. "I didn't… I didn't want to rush this. That's not who I am. And, I mean, come on. Everything was so… weird, Cullen, so impossible, right? A big hole in the sky? A big hole in the earth that had a big hole in reality? And you and me, in the middle of it all? I'm not… I'm not the sentimental type. God help you if you don't know that by now," she said, nudging him easily backward, and she watched his mouth twitch up. "And I don't dig ceremonies, I don't want one - hell, Cullen, I don't want any of that. And if we hadn't been through all of the ridiculous shit we've been through, I might still worry that we were taking this way too fast." She sighed hard. "But we have been. We've been through enough for more than our two lives. And we're still here. Together. So for the love of this lady right here," and she tipped her head toward the statue, "if you want to tell me you're mine and you want me to tell you I'm yours and that we mean it and we mean it for - for, like, ever? If that's what you mean by, if - if that's what you want out of…" she stumbled over the word a little, unprepared to say it, even as the idea warmed her, "of marriage, I would be an absolute idiot to walk away. I love you, Cullen. I really, really do."

The commander paused for a moment then, his eyes scanning the room before settling back on Eleanor, in her silvery robes, her hair still shining wet from a bath, and said, "This'll do, then. El," he began, "Eleanor Redgrove -"

"Oh you stop that, Cullen, I swear to god."

"Will you -"

"Cullen if you say that fucking word one more time I'm telling you right now I will not say yes, do you understand me?"

He laughed quietly, and put a hand on his forehead, looking away, his cheeks pink, and he took a moment to still himself before he started again. "Alright. El." He took a quick breath in but a deep one and asked, "Will you ...be by my side?"

"Yes," Eleanor answered, her voice quiet now, all the sharpness gone out, replaced by a sudden sincerity. "Of course. Always."

"Always?" he asked, barely above a whisper as he tipped his head down to press his forehead to hers, closing his eyes.

"Always."

"Promise?" he said, and she could feel him smile.

"Promise."

"Alright."

"'Kay." She let her arms reach up and she held him around his neck, feeling his hands find her waist, his fingers running quickly over the cool silver of the belt. She brushed her nose up against his and said, "This is the part where I kiss you, right? You folks do that bit here?"

"Strictly speaking, I think I'm the one -"

"Sounds like a yes to me," she said, and despite her playfulness, she kissed him tenderly, her fingers locking behind his neck, and they hardly moved for some time, both languishing in the moment, the morning, the warm sunlight around them.

Eleanor let go reluctantly, pressing a handful of small kisses to his lips before speaking. "How long had you been planning that?"

Cullen shook his head. "I… hadn't thought about it much at all, actually. Which - I mean to say, I'd been thinking about it since… oh, longer than I should admit. I think since the end of the Blight. But planning? I suppose I just…" he shrugged.

"Never let it be said that you don't have excellent timing, Cullen Rutherford."

"Indeed?"

She laughed a small laugh. "I swear."

He ran his hands along her back, feeling the small details in her robes with calloused fingers. "You really do look lovely," he said. "Maybe I just couldn't help myself."

"You don't say," she said wryly.

"Oh, but I do," he said, and kissed her again, a little harder, his wide hands on her back pulling her against him, so close Eleanor was certain he could feel the beating of her heart, a little faster now, and then faster still as his lips made their way to her jaw, her neck. She made a pleased little humming sound and let her hands slide up and into his hair, her hands easing him down until his lips found the small curve of her collar, the skin of her shoulder that the robe allowed him to reach.

Tilting his head, Eleanor felt his breath, warm on her neck as he whispered, "I think perhaps we should go…"

"Or…" Eleanor said, nudging him with her nose so that he picked his head up, letting her kiss the rough stubble along his jawline.

His eyelids fluttered and he looked up at the stones above him as Eleanor returned his kisses and breathed, "Or?"

Her hands in his hair, she brought her lips to his mouth once more, rougher this time, and lead him carefully back against the wall behind him.

Parting his lips from hers but only just, Cullen inhaled sharply and said, "Ah. 'Or.'"

* * *

A/N: So this is the first of the totally un-revised chapters, which is to say, I've read over it once or twice and nothing else has been done. Eagle-eyed readers may want to start spying for grammar and spelling errors now. ;)


	8. Some Kind of Blasphemy

Cullen held fast to Eleanor, reversing their stance and pressing her back to the wall even as he breathed, "Oh surely this is some kind of blasphemy," his lips parted from hers only long enough to speak those words before kissing her again, his hands slipping down along her body to feel the shape of her ribs, her waist, her hips. His fingers grasped roughly at the delicate fabric of her robes, at first only to touch, and then then to begin to slide them up.

The quiet laugh that had escaped Eleanor after Cullen's utterance turned now to a soft, warm moan as his fingers dipped low enough to touch the bare skin of her thigh, first along her hip, and then brushing across her leg to come between them, low at first and then higher.

She sighed his name, her hands grasping his shoulders tightly. Her lips brushed against his ear, and then she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as his fingers brushed against her sex, pulling the fabric of her undergarments aside. Eleanor gasped, her eyes shut tight.

"Oh, El," he groaned as his free hand undid his belt, the front of his trousers, and he pressed his cheek hard against hers as he bent his knees a little to allow himself to push inside her.

Eleanor bit back a cry, trying to keep quiet in this sacred space, knowing not just that this was what it was, but also that the door was neither all that heavy nor all that locked. But she couldn't help herself from exclaiming, "Cullen!" as he reached his arms under her and lifted her feet from the floor. She locked her arms around his neck and held her ankles together as he pressed deep within her, cautiously at first, and then once sure of himself, quick, rough, exhaling hard with each push. His eyes were closed, lips parted, but Eleanor's mouth was shut tight, eyebrows knitted as she sunk quickly further into the ecstasy of their rhythm, trying to keep herself from crying out, the sound of the stone wall against her robes now seeming silent compared to that of her heart, of Cullen's harsh gasps, and a tightness was quickly building inside of her.

His fingertips dug deeply into her skin, grasping tight for control. His cheek was pressed hard against hers, lips brushing her ear with every forward motion, and the closer he got, the more his breaths became the sound of her name, "El, El, El…" until even that was lost.

All it took was two words from her, breathed against his skin: "Cullen - please -" and he was done for. One hand shot out to brace himself against the wall, stumbling a small step forward in his release but holding Eleanor tight, her hands splayed in his hair, her legs trembling even as they gripped him tighter still, her lungs gasping with every spasm.

After a few moments of stillness, of catching their breath, Cullen slowly eased Eleanor down, putting both hands on the wall above her shoulders, his forehead resting gently on hers. Biting her lip in a crooked smile, Eleanor looked up at him and said quietly, "And you thought I would say no."

* * *

They left the chapel arm in arm after some adjusting and some laughing and a little more kissing, Eleanor resting her head against Cullen's shoulder as they walked step for step together. There was a cool mountain breeze blowing across the garden and it caught the little wisps of hair that had fallen down out of Eleanor's elaborate hairdo, twisting the waves around her ears, and it carried the scent of the flowers that grew all along the stone path. She hadn't been this calm in ages. Even in the days leading up to their trip to Thedas, she'd been in a rush, unpacking, repacking, throwing things out, buying things they had thrown out that they would need when they returned home - which she hoped, now more than ever, that they would do soon. Regardless, it had been weeks since she'd literally taken a moment to stop and smell the flowers, and that was generously counting the time after the Blight when they'd been cleaning up in so many different ways, dealing with so many different things. If she ignored that, it had been…

Never. Not with Cullen, anyway. Before him. She took in a slow, deep breath, and languished in this, the first moment when she had nothing more to do, walking slowly, side by side with her… what, partner? Was she going to use that… that H word?

"Lady Eleanor! Commander!"

Eleanor froze and a sound that might have been a curse slipped out between her lips.

"Every fucking time," she heard Cullen mutter under his breath. "What is it, Harding," he growled as the door back to the hall swung open.

"The Inquisitor wants to see you in the War Room," said the dwarven woman, her freckles catching the sunlight and making her look not just small, but young.

Cullen pinched his nose. "Yes, of course she does," he said, more to himself than to anyone and said, "Tell her we'll be right there."

"Yes, Commander!" the dwarven scout said, and hurried away.

"Well," said Cullen, turning a bit to tuck some of Eleanor's loose hairs behind her ears before cupping her cheeks and tipping his face down for a small kiss, "that was nice while it lasted."


	9. It's Always Serious

"They claim not to be affiliated with anyone, but there are reports out of Val Royeaux of anti-Rift groups," Josephine said, flipping through a few papers, "though how organized they are is still up for debate."

"Anti-Rift sounds very much like anti-mage to me," Evelyn murmured, crossing her arms.

"I don't think anyone is going to argue that with you, Inquisitor," Josephine agreed. "It's just one more new magical thing for people to take issue with. First Kirkwall, then the Breach, and now this."

Evelyn's exhausted sigh said what nearly everyone was feeling. Eleanor was staring blankly at the map, trying to figure out the distance between Skyhold and Val Royeaux in miles for no reason except to try and do it. Cullen had his arms folded tightly and his lips pursed, but didn't seem to be looking at much of anything in particular.

"I think they're lying," Cassandra said, "I think they're protecting someone. They didn't get to Skyhold on their own. Everyone who was invited was one of our people."

"That's what we thought," said Josephine, scratching her cheek. "Perhaps one of our invitations was intercepted… I need to speak with the Divine…" she said, exasperated.

"They must be lying," Cassandra repeated, as the door behind her creaked open.

"You think everyone is lying, Seeker."

"Hello, Varric," Evelyn said, a smile creeping slowly across her face as the dwarf walked in. Eleanor gave him a grin as he approached the table.

"Here you're having problems with would-be assassins, Inquisitor. Must be Thursday."

"Sounds about right," Evelyn said, putting her hands on the edge of the table and bending forward. "Though it was Eleanor they made a move for first."

"Getting a reputation for yourself already, Farm Girl?" Varric said. "You'll wanna be careful with that."

"Yeah, I'm gathering," she said, raising an eyebrow.

"This is serious, Varric," Cassandra huffed.

"It's always serious, Cassandra, that's the problem." He crossed his arms and leaned back. "Do we know who we're dealing with?"

"Well, if you had seen fit to be here on time, Varric -"

"Harding caught me up on the way, I get it. They're not with anyone. But who are they? Names? Homes? What's their motivation here?"

"Well, I think it's safe to assume they're not too fond of mages," Cullen muttered, still surly.

"Yeah, but neither is half of Thedas - no offense," he put up his hands for Evelyn and Eleanor, "and you don't see them beating down the doors to stab the Inquisitor. Or any mages really. Well, not all the time, at least."

"The Rift -"

"I don't know. The Rift's not really tangible enough to be a fear. It's like the Blight, and there are people alive who've actually seen a Blight. But as long as it's not on their doorstep, no one cares."

"Well, alright, Varric," Cassandra challenged, "what do you think it is?"

"Me?" He raised his eyebrows. "I've got no idea, Seeker. Isn't that more your department."

"Alright, alright. We've all made our point," Evelyn said, propping her hip up against the War Table. "Josephine, I think our first line of inquiry is to find out just how these two got invited. Did we invite anyone with anti-magical leanings? Was this sort of a… oh, I don't know, a reverse Red Jenny situation?"

"Why not ask Sera?" Cullen asked.

The Inquisitor blinked as though the idea would never have occurred to her before leaning over to Eleanor and asking, "Do you ever feel like the thickest person alive?"

"Oh, all the time," Eleanor reassured her.

"Well as long as it's not just me."

"I can assure you, neither of you are thick. But Curly's right. Let Ruffles do her backtracking, but get Buttercup's people on this too." Varric pinched his chin. "Something about this doesn't feel right to me. I mean, between the five of us, I think we put ourselves in more than our fair share of danger, but this? Ah. Maybe it's nothing."

Evelyn cast Varric the most sidelong glance Eleanor had ever seen one person give another until she caught the look on Cassandra's face.

"Hey, come on! I mean, what do I know! I'm just a businessman!"

"Varric, out," Cassandra said, pointing toward the door.

"Come, now, Seeker -"

"No, she's right, we've done all we can here. We should all get out. Start searching. And you two," she pointed back and forth to Eleanor and Cullen, "are supposed to be having some kind of a rest. Which…" Evelyn paused and rolled her eyes, "...I admit, I have entirely kept you from." She ran a hand through her red hair and said, "We can take this from here. You've done enough for now.

"Inquisitor, I -"

"Commander, no. I apologize, but I won't hear it."

"No, it's not that… it's that… my quarters aren't really… equipped for two." He held his hands behind his back and stood up straight but diverted his eyes, a familiar sheepishness that made Eleanor grin.

The Inquisitor tilted her head slightly. "No, indeed. You're absolutely right, I'm sorry. I'll have new rooms -"

"Actually, I was thinking -" Cullen started and then stopped himself, looking down at Eleanor. He reached one hand up nervously and tugged on his ear.

Eleanor's eyes grew a little wider with impatience and she moved her index fingers in small circles to indicate that he should get on with it.

The commander took in a small quick breath and let it out just as fast. "I was thinking we might have a place of our own. Not… not at Skyhold. If we can't return to Indiana just yet." He looked at the ceiling the whole time he spoke, but then turned his gaze to Eleanor and said, "I'm sorry. I did mean to ask you, this morning actually, but we were a bit… sidetracked." He rubbed the back of his neck and then let his arm drop. "If… if it's alright with you."

Eleanor shrugged. "After this morning, that's what you're nervous about?" She rolled her eyes. "I mean, it's not like we haven't done this before. But if we're not going to be at Skyhold, wouldn't it be faster just to go back to the house? The Breach is kind of, you know. Right there."

Evelyn pressed her lips a little flat and said, "Well… yes, but with my needing to open the Breach and the turnaround time with communications and…" her eyes narrowed a little, not at anyone, but at a thought. "I'm wondering if maybe…" her voice trailed off.

"Evelyn?" Eleanor asked quietly, making a small move over to the Inquisitor.

She shook her head but slowly deigned to speak. "It's something I've been thinking about. When the Blight came, we didn't really have much of a choice. But the Breach, I… it's a hole. It's a tear. We spent so much time trying to close them. We might need this one we've made in the future, but… Perhaps we should… not stretch out the edges, you know?" Her voice was quiet, overly hushed for the room.

"Is everything alright, Inquisitor?" Cullen asked slowly, sensing the hesitance in her voice.

In that moment, the Inquisitor looked older and more tired than either Evelyn or Cullen had ever seen her look. But all she said was, "Just… a feeling." She closed her eyes for a moment and Eleanor noticed a slight curling in the fingers of Evelyn's hand, but as soon as she saw it, it was gone, and Evelyn was saying, "But of course. You two… absolutely. We'll find you somewhere quiet. But close," she said, and pointed an almost parental finger at the two of them, oscillating quickly back and forth between the commander and Eleanor. When she smiled again, the years seemed wiped away, and the Inquisitor once again looked young, younger than she was, with a playfulness in her eyes that was more effective than any cosmetic.

Cullen reached out and grasped Eleanor's elbow, pulling her a little closer him. "That… would be fine, Inquisitor. Evelyn. Thank you." He started to turn to go, bringing Eleanor along with him, but Evelyn stopped him.

"One last thing - Eleanor, if you would?"

Eleanor gave Cullen a small nod and nudged her head toward the door, indicating that she'd follow him shortly. He let her go and followed Cassandra and Josephine out, the women having left some moments before, but Varric remained, and gave the commander a sidelong glance as he went.

"Eleanor," Evelyn said quietly but firmly, "I hope yesterday didn't… put you off."

She shook her head with a little determined frown. "Take more than that to scare me away, Ev. I've fought an Archdemon."

The smile on the Inquisitor's face was bittersweet. "Now you sound like one of us. But," she said, leaning closer to Eleanor, "I mean it. Yesterday… didn't go exactly to plan. I think… I think we need to focus on talking to our people for now."

"You mean mages."

"I do. There's still a lot of infighting between the different Fraternities - such as they still stand. I can't help but think that this might be our chance to bring them back together. Find some common ground. This is a magical problem, first and foremost."

"Evelyn, I don't know anything about -"

"You know more than you think you do, Ellie. Not just in here," the Inquisitor tapped her temple, "but in here," and she put two fingers low on her chest, not at her heart, but along her sternum, that place, that hollow that Eleanor could feel welling, spilling, every time she cast a spell. "There were mages long before their was a College. And you have performed admirably thus far. You're well in control of your magic - and you are one of the strongest spirit healers I have ever seen, and without having trained. You brought the comman- well. There are things I can teach you about the Breach, about the Fade. But I'd like to find you a trainer. And I'd like you to continue your work here as well. Our first little soiree may not have worked out, but there's still much we can do. And there's still so much we don't know about that Rift."

For an instant, Eleanor was speechless. Evelyn was trusting her with so much, when she still felt so unsure in her own skin. When she needed her magic it was always there, but though it definitely took shape when it left her, a particular shape, a cold and harsh shape or a warm and caring one, it always felt so formless and unknowable inside her, and until she was acting, until she was doing, she was never entirely sure that what was going to come out was what she wanted. It often was, but it felt more like instinct than knowledge, and she thought - feared - that this was not the right or best way, and that one day it was sure to backfire. And while it was true that she probably knew as much about that Rift as any of the people at Skyhold right now, she didn't know how to put what she had thought and seen and felt into words - or not the right words. She couldn't talk about the Veil or the Rift except in vagaries and experiences. She didn't know anything about schools of magic or Colleges or Fraternities or the Chantry, and all she knew about the Mage-Templar War was what she had heard from Cullen and Dorian, two ideological extremes, and what she herself had been on the receiving end of. But a trainer…

Eleanor brought her hand to her mouth and pinched her upper lip before saying, "Alright. Yeah, okay. I'll do whatever I can. Let me… let me talk to Cullen."

Evelyn reached out and took Eleanor by the shoulders and said, "Thank you. You've been invaluable so far. I wouldn't want to lose you. But you and Cullen are absolutely entitled to a rest. I know you both just wanted to go back. And I'm happy that there's a back for you to go to. I wish I didn't have to ask any more of you. I… Trust me when I say I know what it's like to be in your shoes."

When Evelyn's green eyes met her blue ones, Eleanor didn't doubt her for an instant.

The Inquisitor released her. "Go. Be with him. We can talk more about this later. I'll see what mages I can get in touch with. No more politics - well, there's always politics. But let me see what I can do. And let me find you a place to stay," she said with a wink.

"Thank you, Ev."

"Of course, Ellie."

Eleanor walked around the table and made for the door, but Varric met her stride and asked, "So what happened this morning?"

"Hm?" The comment was so far behind her now, her mind so full of so many other things, that for a moment she honestly didn't know what Varric meant. Then, though, she remembered what she had said, and now she was purposefully vague. "Oh, that. No, nothing. We just had… a good talk. You know. Sorted some shit out." It wasn't untrue, but she knew Varric well enough now to realize that any specific mention of what had happened in the chapel would be turned into a two-chapter story arc that she had no intention of being in.

"Is that all?" Varric said, disbelieving.

"Yeah, pretty much. It's been a weird couple of weeks, y'know. A lot to…" she shrugged, "talk about."

"Alright, Farm Girl," Varric said, crossing his arms and propping himself up in the doorway that lead to the hall. "But you'll talk. Everyone around here eventually does. You look nice, by the way."

"Goodbye, Varric," she said with a wave, heading for the steps, but she got the feeling that somehow the dwarf had already won.

* * *

A/N: In case you missed it, I started posting _The Inquisition, Indiana Holiday Special._ Yes I know it's June. Don't ask questions.


	10. Shall We Begin?

"So," Eleanor said, running her thumb along the spines of books as she stood in front of Cullen's bookshelf.

"Hm?" he said looking up quickly from a missive he was writing, hunched over his desk in a way that was so irrevocably him that it almost made Eleanor laugh.

"We're gonna live here."

Cullen set his stylus down and stood up straight, looking over to Eleanor who hadn't turned away from the shelves.

"I know this isn't what we planned," he said.

"No, it's alright," she said, turning to face him. "I just… So Evelyn has me doing all this work that I don't really understand and I feel like I should. She wants me to be the face of all of this and I feel so… inadequate, you know? Like, there's a fundamental failing of my person that's keeping me from even beginning to get a hold on this."

"Eleanor, you were down there. You know as much about this as -"

"No, Cullen, I mean… I don't have the background information, I can't do research, I mean… Dude, I can't read." Her shoulders slumped hard, and she bit the corner of her mouth, looking helpless. "I'm fucking illiterate."

Cullen slowly stepped from his desk over to her, putting his hands on her arms. He had an eyebrow raised and he gave her a sad little smile. "El. I hadn't even thought. I don't - I don't think any of us did." Holding her just above her elbow, Eleanor felt his fingers tapping slowly as he thought, his eyes glancing over the books behind him.

"I have an idea," he said. "Let me finish this, but meet me in the library. I'll be there soon."

* * *

She sat in a cushy chair near a window, gazing up and around at the books that towered over her. Eleanor had a thought, just a fleeting one but enough to set her mind racing, that maybe if she could read these, she could be the one who could figure this whole thing out. She pushed it down quickly, telling herself that that was ridiculous; Evelyn and Dorian were terribly smart, hell, Cullen was terribly smart, and certainly they had done their reading. She remembered Dorian sitting half on her armchair, half on the floor, surrounded by books and scrolls and codices, all of them complete gibberish to her. And he had been looking for the same answers she was looking for now. If anyone would have found them, it would have been him.

But no, maybe not. He had had the same amount of information about her earth as she did about Thedas. Leliana supposedly had agents about but they weren't talking, Eleanor assumed for good reason. Leliana seemed the type to never not have a good reason. But she also didn't seem the type to needlessly withhold information from her colleagues, so maybe the kind of information Eleanor wanted wasn't the kind that Leliana's agents were looking for.

God, she wished Dorian were here right now. He had sussed out so much while half-drunk on her living room floor. The two of them together in this repository of knowledge… well, probably mostly Dorian, but there it was again, the fact that she was the only one from earth - Earth? She still didn't know - and maybe, just maybe…

And she missed him. She didn't realize how much until she and Cullen had started packing up their things, and they thought they would be coming to Thedas for good, and she realized she might be able to see him again. He had taught her almost everything she knew about her magic, about the Fade, covertly let her in on things Cullen, the ex-templar, might not be willing to tell her, or might not see the same way. Cullen, who would never willingly keep information from her, but who, despite his openness, had a decidedly militant bent on things. She had grown fond of Dorian. He had become her friend. A good friend. A take no bullshit sort of friend. But now he was in Tevinter, wherever the hell that was. It was where he was from, and it sounded far away, and he wasn't here, and so Eleanor stared down the books with narrowed eyes, almost angry at their unwillingness to give up the kind of information that her Tevinter friend had relinquished so freely.

"There you are," said Cullen, ascending the steps with his arms full of parchment, fingers full of quills and ink. "Here, a table," he said, and went around the cozy little alcove in which Eleanor had situated herself, dumping his armload on a free surface and sitting down. He patted the bench beside him with a smile.

Eleanor rose slowly, easing herself out of her comfortable chair to sit on the hard bench that Cullen had chosen.

"I thought," he said, stretching out a piece of blank parchment in front of where Eleanor would sit, "that it might be good for you to have something to refer back to so that you can study on your own."

"What now?" Eleanor said, getting situated on the bench, tucking her robes beneath her.

"You're going to read," Cullen said plainly. "And write." He righted an ink pot and uncorked it, starting to set it down before asking, "Which hand?"

Eleanor flexed the fingers on her right hand, the hand closest to Cullen, and so he set the ink at the top right of the parchment before stacking all of the other blank sheets into a neat pile and gathering up the extra ink and styluses and putting them aside. He had a thick, well-thumbed book and he flipped it open to a point toward the end, pressing the spine flat in front of him. He grabbed a stylus and dipped it in the ink, dividing the paper in half with a clean, thick line before handing the utensil to her. He reached and pointed to the left column with a firm finger. "This half for…" with the same hand, he tapped his thumb and middle finger together while pointing at Eleanor.

"...English?" she suggested, holding the stylus limply.

"There you are," he said with a snap, "and this half for the common tongue."

Eleanor reached up and scratched the back of her neck, a hesitant expression on her face. Well, she had asked for this, after all, but his enthusiasm was both endearing and intimidating.

"So what am I writing, exactly?" she asked, looking at the open book on the table.

"Ah, well, I've brought The Chant."

Eleanor's expression remained frozen except for her right eyebrow which slowly slid its way closer to her hairline.

"I just thought it would be easy," he said, a little defensively, leaning against the wall behind him, "and," he added, "there's a lot you'll want to know in here, I should think. Scholars have been analysing the Chant for centuries."

"Oh lord," Eleanor mumbled. "Alright, Cul, I submit to your will." She clucked her tongue and gave him a very forced grin. "So where are we starting?"

Cullen scanned the text in front of him, and then narrowed his eyes a bit.

"That's not a good face," Eleanor said, reaching out to nudge him on the chin with her thumb.

"I was going to start with the Canticle of Transfiguration," he muttered, "but perhaps not."

Leaning forward to turn her head up at him, getting between the commander and the book, she said, "Hey, Commander Vague, you can talk to me. I'm new to all this, okay, but I'm not gonna bite your face off. You know me better."

Looking down at her, only inches from her face as she continued to monopolize the space above the book, Cullen pursed his lips but reached out an arm and pulled Eleanor closer, and when she finally deigned to move, he kissed the back of her head, kissed her earlobe and said, "Alright, El. But don't say I didn't warn you."

"Mm, consider me warned, Commander," she said, and tilted her head, inviting another kiss. Cullen obliged her and then let her go, pointing to the page in front of him, a series of dark lines and squiggles that Eleanor could make no sense of.

Well, she thought, at least not yet.

"The Canticle of Transfigurations are the teachings of Andraste, regarding magic -"

"This is why I was warned, I take it."

"I can read something else," he said again, a little more exasperated this time.

Eleanor relented. "No, I'm sorry. You're right. You did warn me. And I said I wouldn't bite your face off. It's a nice face."

Despite his brief tenseness, Cullen felt himself start to smile. He reached up a hand to scratch his cheek and said, "Yes, well. Shall we begin?"

"Alright," Eleanor said, dipping the stylus quickly and wiping the fine point on the edge of the small jar. She leaned forward a bit to follow Cullen's finger as he read and asked, "Go slow."

The commander cleared his throat and begin to softly read, "These truths the Maker has revealed to me: as there is but one world -"

Eleanor snorted as she scribbled, "So much for that."

Cullen rolled his eyes, "Well, it's not… entirely literal."

She looked up at him and said, "Go on."

"One life, one death, there is but one god, and He is our Maker. They are sinners, who have given their love to false gods."

Rolling her eyes and hunching her shoulders dramatically as she wrote, Eleanor said, "I guess every religion has one."

"Oh for the love of -" Cullen began, but in a dry, mocking voice, Eleanor began to recite, "'You shall have no other gods before Me,' or something about so-called gods or something. I dunno, Cullen, I never went to church."

He didn't answer slowly and said, "What's that?"

"...the Bible?"

His look was blank.

Eleanor leaned forward and pressed a hand to her forehead, resting her elbow on the blank side of the paper as she rubbed her brow. "Well, there's that at least." She sat back up and reread the verse to him. "'They are sinners who have given their love to false gods.' Continue."

He gave her a hard look.

"Just read, okay. Let me have my thing. I promise I'm paying attention."

Cullen tapped his finger nervously and said quickly, with a tight jaw, "Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him."

Eleanor's pen hovered above the page, the ink never darkening the parchment.

"Yes?" he asked darkly.

"What the hell does that mean!" she dropped the stylus and threw up her hands.

Cullen put his hand over his mouth and said through his fingers, but mostly to himself, "I should have picked a different verse." He sighed and said, "Eleanor, if you even knew how much has been written about that single line."

"Well I can see why!" She gave her hands a little shake, calming down as she scratched her hairline. "Okay, alright. Scholarly endeavour." She rolled her shoulders a bit. "Why don't you teach me these little doodles you call writing." She squinted over at the book and said, "But first I think I need my glasses."


	11. Magic, Not Mages

After an hour, they had to take a break. Eleanor's hand was cramped from trying to write in the strange hash marks that were both so similar to and so unfamiliar from anything she had ever written before, though she still start to recognize some of them before Cullen would point to her mark, point to the page, and tell her what she was writing.

It was Cullen's mood, on the other hand, that was a bit crunched up. He should have expected Eleanor, strong-willed, straightforward Eleanor, to put up a fight against Transfigurations. Why would he have ever thought otherwise? And he really hadn't, not seriously, but she had been so… something, this morning in the chapel. Serene. Open.

Cullen rolled his eyes at himself. But that was not the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Eleanor had never done anything but put up a fight, and that was what he loved about her, that and so much more. How many women - how many people, indeed - would have stood on their farms in the dark of night, in the rain, and pointed a shotgun at a darkspawn patrol? Certainly not many. He had been fooling himself in some small way, thinking he could read her that line and brook no argument.

He sat at his desk with the Chant in front of him and rubbed his cheeks vigorously. She'd relaxed, she made a joke, but he'd seen the flash of coldness in her eyes when he'd said the verse, a look that seemed only to ask him, "Are you fucking serious?" Because that was absolutely what she would say. Except she hadn't. She'd asked what it had meant.

Should he explain it to her?, he wondered. No, explain was the wrong word. She was not the kind of person you explained things to. He could find her Justinia I's sermon.

She would tear it apart, but he could find it for her. And he knew exactly what she would say when she saw it, could almost hear her smoky voice saying the words: "This is some bullshit, Cul."

He laughed to himself and shook his head.

* * *

Eleanor sat on the battlements with a cigarette. She'd put on jeans and a t-shirt. The day had gotten hot, but was cooling off again. It was still very much spring, but summer was fast rolling in. She could smell warmth, could smell a storm, maybe days off, but it would come. She would know that smell anywhere.

Kicking her legs over the side, the ground hundreds of feet below, she thought about the words that Cullen had read to her. Magic was meant to serve man, not to rule over him. She pulled on her cigarette.

Magic, she thought. Not mages. In her mind, she repeated it. Magic, not mages.

She pushed thick smoke out of her nose. Did it make a difference? Did it matter at all? Evelyn was a mage and she was in charge of the whole god damned world, or so it felt. And apparently Leliana's work as Divine - she was still a bit hazy on all that, but she'd overheard a lot in these past two weeks - was doing much to make mages more accepted, at least officially, than ever before.

And then someone had tried to stab her. Or at least threatened to. Threatened her and the Inquisitor both.

Eleanor sucked her cigarette down to the end and lit another, kicking her heels against the stone.


	12. Lucky

"I think I found something you'll both like," Evelyn said, a rolled piece of parchment under one arm as she leaned against the door in the tower.

Eleanor had been sitting on the floor, scrutinizing a page of text, making out every other letter before having to pick her head up to ask Cullen "just what the fuck" she was looking at. She could recognize simple words now, "a" and "the" and "and," and even some nouns that popped up again and again. But being nearly thirty and having to learn to read all over again was endlessly frustrating to her, and she spent a good portion of the day not sitting but laying on the floor and looking like she wanted to cry or hit something.

Cullen was dealing with her frustration well, mostly by reading what she was going to read beforehand and reciting it back to her while he got on with other things. But when he looked over at her around noon and found her flat-backed on the floor with a book over her face, he couldn't help but smile and be a little kinder. Evelyn was, after all, asking her to get into the most theoretical of magics, and Eleanor couldn't even write "I like cats," with any kind of consistency.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. She had memorized "I like cats."

She had been at it for a week.

So when Evelyn had come in and broken up the monotony, Eleanor almost jumped up at the chance to think about something, anything else for a few moments.

"What's this?" Cullen asked, folding up a letter he had been writing.

"Little place near Redcliff," Evelyn said, unrolling the paper she had brought. It was a property title. "Close enough to here that we could have important information to you in a day, far enough away that you wouldn't be constantly bombarded by, well, this," she said, moving her hands in a wide circle, "us."

Eleanor stood up and stretched as Evelyn handed the paper to Cullen, and as she set the stylus she had been using down on the edge of his desk, she watched the edges of his mouth turn up.

"Inquisitor, I don't… know what to say," he said, scanning the document quickly.

"It's not big," Evelyn said quickly, looking back and forth between the two of them. "Nothing like your home, Ellie. It's not fancy. But it's quaint and it's quiet and it isn't on the battlements surrounded by constant noise and requests. It's right near the lake, too, so you've got a nice view."

Something flashed across Cullen's face and Eleanor thought she saw him nearly drop the paper. The Inquisitor's freckled cheeks went white and she slowly brought a hand to her mouth, looking ashamed.

"Oh, Commander. Cullen. I'm sorry, I didn't even think -"

He shook his head hard, definitively. "No, Inquisitor. It's perfectly alright. That was twenty years ago, nearly. This… it's fine. It's wonderful."

Eleanor wrinkled her forehead, knowing that she was missing something, but also knowing that this wasn't exactly the time to ask. She should wait until she and Cullen were alone, at the very least, but the way Cullen's face had changed so quickly concerned her. She tugged the sleeves of her flannel down with ink-stained fingers, and repeated Cullen's sentiment, though she was far less familiar with the area than he. "Thank you, Evelyn. I'm sure it'll be perfect." She opened her arms and embraced the Inquisitor quickly, Evelyn eagerly returning the little squeeze.

"I do hope you both like it. I know you're eager to get back to Indiana, but hopefully this will make your stay here at least a little easier. And I - we all - appreciate your staying. That said, I can make arrangements for you two to be moved out… well, immediately, really."

Cullen turned to Eleanor and smiled, reaching out one hand to rest on top of hers. "That would be perfect," he said, and he didn't look away from Eleanor.

* * *

They could have ridden horses, but Evelyn insisted Cullen and Eleanor take a carriage. They had at first objected, but after packing up just what little they had at Skyhold, with aching arms and backs they relented. It wasn't just Cullen's things, amassed over almost a decade of residence at the fortress, it was all the things that had been foisted upon Eleanor by the Inquisitor. And it was Swiffer, who knew exactly the right times to get underfoot and the right times to hide - which was to say, the wrong times. After Eleanor had chased the little grey furball all over Skyhold, she had finally pressed Cullen into service, having him hold one of the last remaining pouches of treats and shaking it gently while Eleanor, in the corner, held a box. They stood near the stables - the cat seemed to enjoy the company of the horses, and the sounds of whinnies and hoof stomps covered Eleanor's footfalls while Swiffer was distracted by the sight and smell of Cullen with treats.

At long last, the kitten was secured in the box, and Eleanor and Cullen were too tired to object to the fripperies of a carriage ride down the mountain. With Swiffer finally having ceased her mewling from the crate on the seat next to them, submitting to her unlawful captors, Cullen swung his arm around Eleanor and pulled her close, allowing the gentle rocking of the carriage to sooth them a bit as he drew the curtain closed.

"She seems like she's warming up to me," Cullen said. While Swiffer had never been particularly standoffish with him, it was true, but she always went to Eleanor first, sometimes seemed even to be willing to rat Cullen out to Eleanor when the commander was even two seconds late feeding the kitten in the morning, instead of waiting patiently like she would for Eleanor.

"You're Not Mom now."

Cullen gave Eleanor a sidelong look.

"Well, clearly, I'm Mom. I rescued her, I feed her, I take her to the vet, I give her baths, I play with her with dumb stuff on strings. She lives in my house and she knows it. I'm the boss."

"And I'm… Not Mom?"

"Yeah. Like, she likes you, sure. But you're an interloper. I think she's cottoned on to the fact that you're awake first and she can get fed earlier. And that you aren't going anywhere," Eleanor added with a wink and a nudge.

"So… Dad?"

Eleanor shook her head. "Not even close."

Cullen snorted and jostled Eleanor back, but kept her pulled close. Slowly, though, his demeanor changed, and he clicked his tongue in thought.

"Eleanor, have you ever thought…"

"If this is going where I think it's going, I'm gonna have to put a moratorium on big talks for like at least five years, buddy."

"Ah."

"Well?"

Cullen remained hesitant, silent.

"Well, come on, Cul," she said, but she rested her head on his shoulder to ease him.

"Five years, you say?"

"Oh at least."

"Well, then."

"It's kids, isn't it," she said, sitting up a little straighter.

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, indicating that she had found him out.

"Don't want 'em," she said bluntly.

"You don't -"

"Nope," she said, with a shake of her head, and then sighed deeply through her nose. "Well, I guess it had to come up sooner or later," and she shied away from him just a little bit, not shunning his embrace, but loosening it. She looked away for a long time before looking back, to find a much easier look on Cullen's face than she had expected. "Wait, do you?"

He shrugged. "I don't suppose I ever had much time to think about it. I never had the luxury of having anyone to discuss it with, either."

A wash of guilt went over Eleanor. It wasn't going to change her mind, but she did feel more than a little bad that she had had the privilege of coming to her own conclusion long before Cullen - or at all, really.

"So," Eleanor said slowly, wiggling around to face Cullen on the seat, "do you have any thoughts?"

"I'm not really certain I care either way. Branson has a son, so it isn't as though the family line would die out. Mia and Rosalie may have children of their own some day," he said, matter of fact, then reconsidered. "Well, perhaps not Mia." He paused before speaking again. "I suppose I always thought I would die a templar. And then the Inquisition was my life. I perhaps thought maybe one day - that's just people do, isn't it? But I never really… considered the matter further. I'm not attached to the idea, and - well, look at us, El. If I had an opinion, it's that we should probably stop receiving death threats first. And pick a side of the Rift. A family might be nice, but family can mean many things. So no. I don't suppose I mind."

"You're a very weird sort of selfless, Cullen, you know that?"

"I don't know that I would call it selfless, exactly."

"I absolutely would. Selfless, dedicated, devoted, all that stuff," Eleanor said, settling back down against Cullen's side. "Sometimes you make me realize just how lucky I am to have found you," she said quietly, easing against him, welcoming the rocking motion of the carriage, the weight of his arm around her shoulder.

The commander didn't respond. He wasn't quite certain how to. This entire time, this whole past year, he had felt more like a burden to Eleanor than anything. Oh, he knew she loved him and all of that, but from the moment he had set foot on her farmland, he had put nothing but weight on her. The Blight. His soldiers. Her magic - for which he had treated her more poorly than he would have liked.

And his own death, or something like it.

He had been told about those anxious moments before the Archdemon had been slain, about Eleanor's frantic, desperate efforts to draw more mana, more magic up and out of her small body, to pour them into him. Evelyn had told him everything, from the Iron Bull dragging her away from the conflict as Stroud put an end to the corrupted dragon to Eleanor's heartbreaking sobs when she thought Cullen wouldn't open his eyes again. When maybe, if she hadn't been so desperate, so desperately powerful, he wouldn't have.

All Cullen remembered was blackness, a blackness that seemed to stretch out into eternity in all directions, in all moments in time; and then whiteness, warm at first, and then cold, so cold; and then Eleanor's voice, broken and rough, repeating through sobs that she was sorry, and the sadness of it broke his heart.

No. Lucky was not the word he would use if he asked what impact he thought he had had on Eleanor's life. He reached up and ran his free hand through his hair, feeling tired all of a sudden, more tired than just the effort of packing, of moving should have made him. He pulled Eleanor a little closer, working his own hand into the front pocket of her worn-out black hoodie, clasping his fingers around hers, also there.

"I love you," he said quietly.

"I'm still not having your babies," she answered.


	13. Live with That

The house was nothing short of pleasant. It wasn't big, but it was airy, and let light in on all sides. It was only one story but after climbing the ladder in Cullen's quarters three times a day for the past month, Eleanor couldn't say she really missed having an upstairs. They had a sitting room, a bedroom, a kitchen with a little place to eat, plenty of places to stash things, and a library, which Cullen immediately saw to filling with the books he had brought. Moreover, it had come full to the brim with soft, velvety furniture, thick carpets, rich wallhangings, and it seemed homey and warm from the moment they stepped inside. Even Swiffer seemed to approve, at first just anxious to get out of the box she'd been crammed in for the past eight hours - "It was bigger than her cat carrier!" Eleanor insisted after the animal swatted at her and leapt away, refusing to be held - but then quickly settling down in an armchair, curling and turning until she flopped over and fell asleep.

Eleanor and Cullen stood together on a patch of earth that could be a yard or a garden, the soil black beneath their feet, and took it in as the sun began to set over Lake Calenhad, the body of water filling the entirety of the scenery behind their little home. Cullen had his arm wrapped around Eleanor's shoulders, and as the sun lowered down behind them, the water of the lake sparkling in their vision, he pulled a cigarette from his lips and said, "Not bad." The breeze picked up and tugged a bit at his dirty t-shirt and he tucked his free hand in his pocket. He was tired and his clothes were a bit mussed from the little unpacking they'd done before they both decided it could wait. Cullen had changed into his Indiana things, as he thought of them, to do all the heavy lifting, but now the breeze off of the lake was a little chilly and he drew Eleanor in closer, tilting his neck to give the crown of her head a kiss.

"Not bad at all," Eleanor agreed, and though there was still a niggling little bit of her that was disappointed that they weren't back on Indiana soil, it was shrinking, it was receding, and when she looked at their little house, their little home, she couldn't even begin to repress her smile.

* * *

There came a knock on the door on their third morning in the little house. They had been eating breakfast and Eleanor started to rise, but with a mouthful of eggs, Cullen waved her to sit, and he went to the door, wiping his hands on his jeans before pulling it open.

A messenger stood a few feet back from the threshold, a burgundy hood pulled over her hair, a cloak covering most of her body despite the warmth of the day. She wasn't one that Cullen recognized, and wasn't dressed like someone from the Inquisition, haphazard though their agents might be, and the seal on the envelope that she had in her hand was unfamiliar to him as well. He had no doubt that Leliana or Josephine would be able to authenticate it straight away, but that was not Cullen's area of expertise, nor did he wish it to be. But his already elevated suspicion was only heightened when the woman said, "Message for Eleanor Redgrove."

Cullen put out his hand to accept the missive, but the messenger did not budge.

After a pause, the hooded woman insisted, "I was told only to deliver it to her, sirrah," and she withdrew slightly from Cullen's outstretched hand.

The commander blinked, not retracting his arm, and waited a stunned moment before saying, "She's my wife."

The messenger shook her head as though that were not the answer she were expecting, but clarified regardless, "I'm sorry, sirrah. My orders -"

"Problem?" Eleanor said, walking over from the kitchen.

"Eleanor Redgrove?"

"That's me," she said, shuffling her hair away from her face with the fingers of her left hand. "Help you?"

"Message for you, my lady," the woman said, bowing her head and letting her deep cowl fall a little further over her eyes.

Cautiously, Eleanor reached out and took the envelope, running her thumb over the wax seal, hesitantly saying. "...thanks?"

The woman gave a bow, one hand on her waist, the other on her back, and quickly turned, striding purposefully away. Eleanor and Cullen paused for a minute before looking at each other, both equally confused. Then Eleanor shifted her weight onto one foot, holding the letter in her hand as she popped out the opposite hip and rested her wrist on it, saying, "Your wife, huh? So we're just going around, telling people?" as she closed the door.

Cullen tensed up and though he didn't actually move, his whole demeanor gave the impression that he was shrinking away.

"I - ah - I had thought -"

Eleanor shook her head and closed the space between them, slapping Cullen lightly on the arm with the back of the hand that held the letter. "S'cool. I like the sound of that."

She began to walk back to her breakfast, but Cullen held his place and turned slightly to face her, saying, "You do?"

Swiveling around, she answered, "Yeah. I can live with that." There was a clatter behind her then, and she quickly spun on her heel and shouted, "Damn cat! Those are not for you! Cullen already fed you; get your face out of my toast!" she stormed back into the kitchen, muttering under her breath, "God damn it."

Chuckling low, Cullen decided he could live with it too. The warmth that washed over him cleared his mind completely, until he saw Eleanor shaking a piece of paper at Swiffer as the chastised cat scurried across the floor.

"What does it say?" he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Hm?" Eleanor asked, looking up and regaining her composure. "Well, sirrah," she said, teasing him, "I think it was for my eyes only." She scoffed, "not like I could read it. To be honest, I'm a little scared to open it, but I'm guessing you folks don't have anthrax here."

Cullen slowly shook his head, but muttered, "A poisoned letter?"

"Yeah, like that," she said, looking down at the envelope, running her thumbs along the edges. It was crisp and white. Even the Inquisition didn't use paper this bleached, this fine.

"Who would send something like this?" she asked quietly.

Cullen took his hands out of his jeans and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one as Eleanor flipped the letter over in her hands. He rubbed his fingers together and then extended his hand to Eleanor, asking wordlessly to see the missive. Eleanor went to his side, bumping her shoulder against his and motioning to swap the letter for the cigarette. He accepted the trade, passing the cigarette to Eleanor and receiving the letter, doing at first the same as she had, turning it over and over. He wished now that he could identify the seal, or indeed anything about the parchment. But aside from that, it was blank. No name, no nothing.

Finally, he asked, "May I?"

For lack of anything else to do, Eleanor breathed out smoke and shrugged. "Not much else we can do."

His lips pressed thin, he nodded slowly and slid his pinky under the wax and, careful not to warp or break the stamp, Cullen held the letter away from himself and popped the seal from the parchment, shaking it open. Only a small square of paper fluttered to the floor. Holding her cigarette between her lips, Eleanor bent down to pick it up, turning it around in her hands until the writing was - she thought - upright as Cullen went to set the envelope down on the kitchen table, making sure to preserve the wax seal. Eleanor squinted, unable to suss out the contents, before saying, "Well, I can tell you it's a short message," and passed it on to Cullen as he returned from the kitchen.

He took it from her, and within moments, the commander's whole demeanor changed. He took a few steps backward until he was no longer in the entryway but in the sitting room and he leaned against the sofa, his eyes scanning the words again and again.

"Oh come on, Cul, it's not that long," Eleanor said, her words sarcastic but her tone uneasy. When he let his hand fall, the paper still between his fingers, he didn't look to Eleanor but out the window, his face stern, more the commander now than Eleanor had seen him since the Blight. His jaw was tight, and the lines around his mouth were deep parentheses. "Cullen," she said, "seriously. Come on," but her words were soft as she padded towards him, her bare feet treading quietly. "What does it say?"

He turned to her now and though his face remained hard, his eyes were soft, almost painfully so. He rubbed his empty hand along his chin, looking down at the floor before meeting her gaze, and when he did, he made a fist, and crushed the paper in his hand as he finally answered her, "It says, 'We have seen you. You have been warned.'"

* * *

A/N: Woke up this morning with a lot of new ideas for all the fics I'm working on. Hope to get at least some of them written down today.

Just a reminder that I am updating some things over at AO3 that I'm not updating here (yet) if you want to check out my other current projects (don't feel left out; they aren't getting any new chapters of Once More unto the Breach for, like, months). There's a modern-day retelling of Dragon Age II, specifically, called Dragon Age: AD that I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of writing. It's very pro-mage, and it's dark and irreverent at the same time. So check that out if you wanna.


	14. A Bit of a Risk

"No, Inquisitor, I don't think -"

Evelyn paced in the space between the living room and the entryway, one hand propping up her elbow, the other over her lips.

"Commander, I don't care what you think right now. This was a threat."

"Yeah, kinda got that from the letter, Ev," Eleanor said, her head in her hands as she sat in the armchair, hunched forward.

"Yes. Well," the Inquisitor said, "Regardless, Cullen, I'm going to place guards. Ah -" she put up her hands as he stood from the sofa to object more forcefully, "no. I will not hear it. You both are my responsibility. In fact, I'm contemplating sending you both back to Indiana straight away, research be damned."

"Inquisitor -" Cullen started.

"And I'm increasing security on the Hinterlands cave. We don't want any of these people going there, going… over." She sighed tugging at her rusty hair with both hands. "I'm starting to think Dorian was right," she muttered.

"Dorian?" Eleanor said, perking up.

Evelyn shook her head. "A long time ago when - it's a long story but I managed to enter the Fade. Physically, you understand."

"Wait, I know this one. Varric told me this story."

"He would," Evelyn said, the mention of the dwarf making the Inquisitor look simultaneously more enlivened and nd exhausted both. "But, of course, the last time anyone made that journey, the Golden City turned black - that's how the Blights started, you know. Luckily for us, our consequences were a little less grim… except… well… Hawke…" Evelyn got quiet a moment and blinked quickly, either batting away tears or trying to collect her thoughts; Eleanor couldn't tell. "But Dorian wasn't with us. And when we returned, he made it very clear that he thought the information about our little jaunt to the other side of reality should be… kept unavailable to discourage others from trying to replicate our feat. Cassandra wrote an official report for posterity, and that was all.

"Of course, no others had the Anchor, but at the same time, that might only have made the situation worse since, ah, alternative methods would have had to have been used for anyone else to make that kind of a tear in the Veil." The Inquisitor paused and waved her hands out in front of her, trying to backtrack a bit, trying to say that she did have a point. "I'm wondering if perhaps we shouldn't have done all of this, or, at the very least, we should have gone about it more covertly. I thought full disclosure was the best policy, to let everyone go back to their Circles and libraries with all the facts laid out for them, but now…" she frowned a wide frown, eyes low.

"You did what you thought was best, Inquisitor," Cullen tried to reassure her.

"Yes, well, you and I both know awful things occur at the hands of those who mean well." She walked over to Eleanor and perched herself on the footstool near the armchair where Eleanor sat. "Regardless, Ellie, we'll be taking it down a notch. No more large meetings. All one-on-one. We've done enough damage. We can no longer keep this a complete secret, but we will not advertise what we know. And Commander," she turned her face to Cullen, "we got nothing out of the two who, well," she mimicked a crude stabbing motion with her right hand. "Either they're very good at covering their tracks or they really were acting of their own accord. I was very much ready to chalk it up to the second option, but with this letter," her voice slowed as her gaze turned back to Eleanor, and the Inquisitor gave her a deeply sympathetic look, "ah, well. We still have them detained if you wish to interrogate them further."

Cullen declined, saying, "Between Cassandra's methods and Leliana's people, I'm not sure what else I could offer, but," he added, his expression souring, "I'm not opposed to keeping them detained for as long as the Inquisition sees fit."

"Well, they didn't exactly achieve much other than a bit of mouthing off. Perhaps a few more weeks, contingent upon any further information we might receive."

"Hang on," Eleanor said, leaning back and crossing her arms.

"Hm?" Evelyn inquired.

"What if you let them go?"

"Let them go!" Cullen objected.

Eleanor cocked an eyebrow. "How good are Leliana's agents?"

The Inquisitor flash of confusion was quickly replaced by a bright understanding, an open-mouthed grin. She put a hand on Eleanor's knee.

"Let them go, and have them followed," she nodded. "It's a bit of a risk, but it just might work."

* * *

Before Evelyn took her leave, the three made plans for the commander and Eleanor to return to Skyhold late the next week, hoping that they would have some more information unwillingly given by their soon-to-be-free prisoners by then.

As the Inquisitor was about to walk out, she said, "I had planned on coming down here for a housewarming! One hell of a housewarming, huh."

"At this point, I wouldn't have expected anything less, honestly," Eleanor confessed.

The Inquisitor shrugged sadly before drawing Eleanor in for a hug. "I'll see you soon, alright? And my previous offer still stands."

"I think I'll take you up on that," Eleanor said as Evelyn released her.

"Previous offer?" Cullen asked, but Evelyn distracted him by grabbing him by his elbows and insisting, "You keep her safe, you hear me?"

Cullen chuckled and said, "That seems to have been more Eleanor's speciality so far - but I'll do my duty, Inquisitor," he said, half-seriously, half with a grin.

"And I'll have guards here by morning, regardless. Don't worry, Commander, they'll keep their distance. I'll let you be the master of your domain."

"Oh, you might," Eleanor laughed.

Under their feet, Swiffer meeped, clearly miffed by having been ignored this whole time. Eleanor bent down and whisked the grey fluff into her arms, and Evelyn offered the cat a scritch on the head before she went. "Ah, here's the real master," the Inquisitor said, and Swiffer settled into a contented machine-like purring. Evelyn smiled wide, her freckles standing out on her full cheeks. "You make a lovely family, you three. Speaking of which," and she gave Cullen one last nudge. "Your sister would love to hear from you, I'm sure."

Cullen looked suddenly crestfallen. "Indeed," he muttered.

"Just let her know you're alive. You're both alive," Eleanor insisted.

Cullen diverted his eyes, and after so many years, Evelyn knew exactly what that meant.

"Andraste's ass, Cullen, you haven't told her about Eleanor?"

Eleanor gave Cullen a sidelong look, and as though understanding, Swiffer grumbled in Eleanor's arms.

"I've not written her since… before the Blight."

"Oh, Cullen. You're hopeless," Evelyn said, but there was laughter in her voice. "Alright, you two. I should get back before there are nary but ruins to get back to. Be safe. Don't venture too far." Cullen pulled open the door for her and Evelyn went to the sapling where her horse was tied, and where two more horses waited with Inquisition soldiers already on their backs. "And write your damned sister," she said, and mounted her steed.

* * *

A/N: So, while I do have something like 20 more chapters of this written, I've put it on the back-burner a little bit. I'm working on it slowly and consistently, but most of my efforts have been pretty strongly focused on the modern-day retelling of Dragon Age: II I'm working on over on AO3. At the risk of repeating myself, since I'm almost sure I've mentioned it before, It's called "Dragon Age: AD - Kirkwall" (like I'm going to write a bunch of other ones, but who the fuck knows) and it's a really pro-mage pro-Anders account of events. Again, I will still be working on OMUTB consistently behind the scenes, and I will still be updating it here slowly but regularly, as long as I feel like I can keep a good backlog of chapters. But if you want to see what I'm up to on a day-to-day basis, DA:AD is where it's at. My user name is the same there as it is here.


	15. And Then, Of Course, There's You

"Alright," Cullen said triumphantly, emerging from the library, "it's done." He waved two pieces of paper of above his head.

"What's this now?" Eleanor said, picking her head up from Cullen's copy of the Chant of Light. Her sarcasm had bled out of her after the third or fourth recitation and now she was able to identify almost half of the words in a few canticles, and was slowly but surely sussing out more by sheer context alone. She pulled her glasses off and blinked a few times, black squiggles still dancing in front of her face.

"I've written her," and he fell heavily down on the sofa next to Eleanor.

"You don't say," Eleanor said, putting a strip of leather in her book to keep the place and letting it thunk heavily to the floor. "That's… the last two years?"

Cullen turned the papers over in his hand. "It is."

"All of it?"

His eyes narrowed, "Yes?"

"Shouldn't it be… a bit longer?" Eleanor said, taking the parchment into her hands. She could only make out a word or two without further scrutiny, but it was only the front and back of one sheet, and barely the front of the other.

"I…" Cullen said, looking a bit bruised.

Eleanor couldn't help but take pity. "I'm sure it's fine," she belatedly reassured him. "What does it say?"

"Well, of course a good deal of it is our work in Indiana, though I didn't want to worry her overmuch," he said.

"Cul, I think she's probably heard by now."

"Yes, well, she doesn't have to hear it from me," he rebuffed. "And then, of course," he went on, "There's you."

"Oh is there," Eleanor said, settling against him.

"Of course," he said, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling against her neck.

Eleanor flinched a bit. "Your hair tickles," she said.

"It needs to be cut," he admitted.

"Me to do it?" she said, hanging only as many words in her sentence as it absolutely needed, in the way that she did when she was tired, or comfortable enough to feel tired. Once upon a time, Cullen would have needed her rephrase her question, but now he fell into her easy rhythm, answering only, "D'be nice."

"Mm. I can do it tomorrow before we leave," she said.

"Mm," he agreed, and let his chin rest on her shoulder. The sun was only just beginning to set but writing the letter to Mia had exhausted him and he drifted off for a moment before Eleanor roused him again with a question.

"What did you say about me, exactly?"

"I, ah," he said, sitting back up and leaning against the arm of the sofa. "I said that when I met you I thought you very possibly might be the death of me and some days I still do."

"You did not!" she said, and kicked his foot.

He laughed. "Not in so many words, no. I said that while I was in Indiana I fell in love with you and the first moment I had where our lives weren't imminently in danger -"

"So, like, the day after, because that whole thing with -"

" - I asked you if you would be mine and you said yes."

"Aw," Eleanor said, wrapping her fingers carefully around Cullen's, trying not to crinkle the pages she still held, "no wonder it's so short."


	16. Knock on Wood

"You're married?!"

"Neither of you told me you decided to get married!"

Cullen stood in the War Room, eyes closed, face tipped skyward, thumb and forefinger pinching his nose. Eleanor was beside and slightly behind him, her face in both her palms. And they were both catching hell.

"We should have done something, I should have gotten you both -" the Inquisitor sputtered, but she was cut off.

"Two and a half years, Cullen!"

Mia Rutherford was not a large woman. In fact, she was the smallest person in the room by height. She had blonde hair like Cullen's, and in a different situation her dark hazel eyes and round face might have been warm, friendly.

"Mia," Cullen said, not moving or lowering his gaze an inch, "I was a little busy."

"Not too busy to get hitched, I see!"

Eleanor's body seemed to recede behind her shoulders and she took one hand away from her face to gently wave, almost whispering, "Hello…"

Mia flung the letter down and pushed past the Inquisitor, striding powerfully to Cullen. Eleanor saw him flinch a little as his sister threw out her arms and instead of bludgeoning him as he must have expected, caught him in a tight embrace. "I'm so happy for you," she said, and even as she hugged him, something in her tone still sounded perhaps not angry, but definitely forceful, and Eleanor immediately understood every moment of reticence Cullen had ever had regarding her. She was small but intense, all of Cullen's forcefulness, his command, wrapped up into this petite woman.

Slowly, Cullen unwound his defensive stance and wrapped his arms around his sister. "Thank you," he said quietly.

"And Eleanor," Mia said, releasing her brother, "I'm so glad to meet you," and she hugged her with as much force as she had embraced Cullen.

"Hi," was all Eleanor could squeak.

When Mia let go, she turned back to the Inquisitor saying, "She's very pretty. Don't you think she's pretty?"

Slightly flustered herself, Evelyn said, "Yes, I suppose she is - I mean, of course you are, Eleanor, I -" but while Mia's back was turned Eleanor shook her head quickly no and moved one flat hand back and forth on top of the other to signal that Evelyn didn't need to say anything for her sake. Cullen, meanwhile, was slowly turning pink.

"I still don't understand why you didn't tell me," Evelyn said.

"We didn't want a big to-do," Cullen said, rubbing his face to hide the blush that had risen there. "It wasn't…"

"I'm not big into…" Eleanor's voice trailed off and she flailed her hands in small circles. "You know."

"Well, I can't say I blame you. When Sera and I -"

"What?" Cullen spat.

"Oh, no, buddy. We don't get to play that card today," Eleanor said quietly, resting her hand on his arm. "Evelyn, really. It was just a little thing. Just for us. I promise. And the house, I mean, what else could we ask for?"

"And Mia, I am sorry. I should have told you about Eleanor sooner. I… should have told you about a great many things a great deal sooner. I will try to be better about it, though hopefully there isn't too much more to tell."

"Knock on wood," Eleanor said, reaching out to tap the table gently with her knuckles.

"Oh, Cullen. You'll never change," Mia waved his sentiment away. "But do try," she added, more to Eleanor than to her brother.

"A dinner, at least," Evelyn insisted, "while Mia is here. That's all I ask. All of us together."

"Well," Cullen said, running a hand over his hair, "I suppose it couldn't hurt."

* * *

Cullen leaned over the battlements next to his tower, looking down into the valley below. What had once been a camp of followers, of believers, either in Evelyn herself as the Herald of Andraste or in the spirit of the Inquisition, had grown into a small town, temporary tents long ago replaced by permanent structures, paths replaced by roads. Though it had been years, it still amazed him to look down their on a settlement that this - that he - had been part of the reason for. Really it was Evelyn they had to thank; Maker only knew how but she had held the thing together when it should have all fallen apart. But he had been there. He had done his part. Modesty or no, the long hours, the sleepless nights, the grey in his hair were all a testament to that. He had been there, and here he was again. A little older, a little wiser, a little more fulfilled. A little, he wondered, or a lot? He fished into the folds of red fabric wrapped around his sides - a little more than careworn at this point, even with expert repair - and found a half-crushed pack of cigarettes, seven or eight left inside.

"Yeah, well, enjoy that," came Eleanor's voice from down the battlement as she approached. "We're almost out." She folded her arms and leaned on the stone next to him.

"Blast," he said through pursed lips as he lit the smoke.

"You're telling me," she muttered.

They'd been here three days, waiting for intel from their released captives - and so far, nothing. Yet with only three days gone, Evelyn must have put a rush on Cullen's letter - of course she would - because Mia had arrived that morning. It was a day's journey to South Reach from Skyhold for a skilled rider. Cullen and Eleanor had arrived in the early afternoon and quickly passed off their things, including his letter to his sister. The letter must have arrived early the next morning, and Mia must have left, well, post haste, to have arrived so soon. This was the first day that Cullen had worn his old things, the first day that Eleanor had traded in a ratty blue flannel for plush midnight robes. As much as Cullen wanted to convince himself he didn't care, he was glad that Mia hadn't walked in on him in a hoodie and jeans, on Evelyn in leggings and a button-down shirt. Though as he stuffed the crumpled pack of cigarettes back in his pocket, he thought that it might be time to get some new clothes himself, Theodosian or otherwise.

"Your sister's… nice…" Eleanor said, sliding her arm around Cullen's.

"She's… Mia."

"She's a little scary."

"That she is."

"Two weeks, Evelyn said," and Eleanor reached over to pilfer the cigarette from Cullen's fingers, taking a long drag before passing it back to him.

"Two weeks?"

"The dinner. Two weeks to get everything ready."

"Ah," Cullen said, then pulled on the cigarette. "Does that sound like a small get together to you?"

"Nope."

"Has she been talking to Josephine?"

"Almost certainly."

Cullen looked over at Eleanor and gave her a conspiratorial raise of his eyebrow, a little knowing frown. She agreed, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

"Well, I suppose we can go back to the lake for two weeks," he offered.

"Actually…" Eleanor said, looking away.

"What's the matter?"

"No, nothing like that," she insisted quickly.

Sensing her hesitance, he passed the cigarette back to her and she accepted it, taking a tiny puff before saying, "Evelyn wants me to… work with a trainer."

"A trainer?"

"You know." And she waggled her fingers. "A trainer."

"That's… are you… asking me?"

She shrugged, and gave him the cigarette back.

"Eleanor, you…" he pursed his lips. "You are an intensely powerful mage. Part of my job was to make sure that people like you were kept safe so that you could learn to use your abilities." With his free hand he pinched his upper lip just below his nose.

"But?" she asked, pushing herself gently between him and the stone, looking up into his eyes.

"But I would like to go back to our new house and sleep in our new bed for a very long time. Especially if Mia is going to be here for two weeks."

Eleanor chewed her bottom lip and nudged his chin with her nose. "Sleep, huh?"

"Yes, sl - ah. Well."

"What's say we come back in… oh, a week and a half."


	17. The Most Dangerous Manifestation

"Evelyn, look. I understand about the Breach and all," she said, kicking the dirt in the courtyard, "but we're out of cat treats. And cigarettes. And I'd really like to make sure my house is still there. And buy some new socks. Can we just have… two days? One night? We'll be back in time for the dinner. And then you'll have us for as long as you need since we'll have prepared a little better."

Eleanor gave the Inquisitor a pleading face and Swiffer, ever the ham, mooped sadly at Evelyn's feet, pleading for treats that Eleanor had long since run out of.

Evelyn bit a knuckle tentatively. "Well," she said slowly, "I didn't give either of you a lot of warning, did I? And it's been more than a month already."

"Almost two," Eleanor impressed, trying to sound like she was stating a fact more than whining, and it was a fact. They'd been in Thedas almost twice as long as she and Cullen's worst-case scenario allowed for.

The Inquisitor sighed through her nose. "Alright. I'll open the Breach, send you both through. First thing tomorrow morning."

Eleanor folded visibly with relief. "Thank you, Evelyn. That means a lot."

"You've got a busy day today, though, then."

"I do?"

"You do," said a voice behind them. It was a voice like Leliana's but deeper, richer. Eleanor turned around and came face to face with a diminutive woman with short, dark brown hair and the palest green eyes Eleanor had ever seen. She was Dalish and she looked it, her frame even more waifish than Sera's, her ears more square, more broad, but with that characteristic point, and her face thinner and longer than the archer's face. Sera was the only other elf that Eleanor knew, and even then, only just, but if she had to put the two women side by side, Eleanor would have pointed to this woman in her long blue robes first when asked to identify an elf.

"Eleanor," Evelyn said, walking to her side, "this is Grand Enchanter Fiona. She'll be instructing you."

Eleanor didn't know whether to shake hands with or bow to someone with that title, but it sounded important, so she leaned forward a bit and extended her hand both. "A pleasure to meet you," Eleanor said, and the Grand Enchanter took Eleanor's hand and gave a firm shake with delicate fingers.

"The pleasure is mine, Ms. Redgrove. I've been looking forward to meeting the woman from the other side."

"Fiona is one of the few people I talked to about you almost immediately. And with your… efforts during the fight against the Archdemon, she wanted to meet you as soon as possible," Evelyn said, and the elven woman gave a little half-nod, half-bow. "Nevertheless, I wanted to make sure it was alright with you before I made the introductions."

"Indeed," Fiona agreed. "Spirit healing is not something that should be taken lightly at all. It is probably the most dangerous manifestation of a mage's powers."

"It… it is?" Eleanor said quietly.

"Absolutely. The spirits must learn to trust you, which is no small task in and of itself - though from what I've heard of your work, you might already have some friends in the Fade," and Fiona gave a little smile that greatly softened her features, and for a moment, Eleanor relaxed. "But a call to spirits is also a call to demons, and that should never be forgotten."

Something inside Eleanor lurched, and she struggled to keep her body still; as Fiona spoke the words, she remembered her dreams, those first dreams, strange and concerning and frightening at the time but reaching and almost peaceful, a searching feeling, and then the dreams that came later, the fearful ones, the ones full of darkness, the ones where things were not at all what they seemed. She forced her body to be still regardless, only nodding at the Grand Enchanter's words, hoping her face didn't give anything away - though perhaps, if she were to give everything away, Fiona would be the person to give it to. After all, she had told Cullen about the dreams, maybe not in full detail, no, but his templar training would have tipped him off if anything were truly wrong, shouldn't it?

"In fact," Fiona went on. "That's a good place to get started, I should think. Tell me, what all do you know of the creatures that reside in the Fade."

Eleanor looked to Evelyn to see if there was some right answer she should be giving, but the Inquisitor only gave a small shake of her head, so Eleanor admitted, "Nothing. Like, literally nothing."

"I see. How strange… Nevertheless, let's begin."

* * *

Eleanor was so tired at the end of the day that after climbing the stairs up to the battlements that when she looked at the ladder to bed, she sat down on Cullen's desk instead. He was still out in the yard with Cassandra even as the light grew dim, but she didn't honestly know if she could make it up the ladder on her own. Eleanor couldn't remember having been so tired since - since when? Since the Deep Roads? Surely the Archdemon had been more exhausting, but she had been running on panic, on lyrium, on adrenaline. The Deep Roads had been a slow wearing down, an emotional erosion, punctuated by moments of primal fear. Her abiding memory of the whole experience was just how tired it had made her in the end.

She felt that was now, and Fiona hadn't actually had her do anything. It had been a lot of talking on Fiona's part, a lot of listening on Eleanor's. She wished she had thought to take notes, but her fingers were still sore from copying and recopying the Chant anyhow. Eleanor's head was swimming in facts, in myths, in speculation, and her mind was desperately grasping at, trying to tie together, all the loose ends into one cohesive series of thoughts, trying to reconcile her Rift with what she had just learned, and all she was getting for her efforts was a splitting headache. And there had been no magic involved. It had been different with Dorian, but then, that was so much more basic, so much more trial-by-fire; but then, hadn't the whole past year been trial-by-fire? She laughed to herself, and thought perhaps it was more trial-by-ice. And yet, the past two months has somehow been even more stressful.

Fiona's words echoed in her mind. The most dangerous kind of magic. She understood why, and now she understood how, but it seemed so absurd. She could freeze, could shatter people with a single touch, but healing them, keeping them safe: that was where the real danger lay.

A fresh wave of exhaustion swept over her, the feeling especially unkind in her knees and shoulders, and she pulled her legs up to her chest, putting her dirty shoes on Cullen's untidy desk. Momentarily she felt bad, but the relief she felt when she bent forward and rested her cheek on her knees consigned any guilt to the far recessive of her mind. The dim light filtering from the outside was growing redder, its warm color like a heavy hand on her eyelids, on the back of her neck. She took a deep breath, her body swelling then shrinking again, knowing that she should get up, should just climb the ladder, just go to bed, and as she was willing herself to do it, gathering the strength to pick her head up off of her legs - it had been a mistake to fold herself up that way, the tiredness seeping into all the new corners she had just made - she heard the door to the tower open.

"There she is," Cullen said quietly, his tone easy, and Eleanor was thankful for that.

"Here I am," she answered with a weak smile.

Cullen pulled off his heavy gloves and set them on his desk beside Eleanor's curled up form. He had been overseeing the training of new Inquisition recruits with Cassandra, and though he too looked tired, he seemed invigorated, excited, and not wiped out and worn down like Eleanor. He opened his arms wide and embraced her, curled up knees and all, kissing her temple as he quietly asked, "How was it?"

"I'm tired," she answered.

She felt him nod against her and he offered, "We're going home tomorrow."

"Mm," she said, and was glad for it, though the reminder that their time in Indiana would be so short for now - for how long? - did nothing to mitigate her exhaustion.

"Let's get you to bed, my love," Cullen insisted, sensing her bone-deep weariness, knowing he was not likely to get much more out of her that night. He swept her up into his arms and she cooed a bit, appreciating his strength and understanding, both of mind and of body, as he cradled her in his arms and took her to the upper level. Another night and she would have kissed him long and hard, pulled him down on top of her and stayed up maybe just a little longer until the sweat cooled on their bodies. Tonight, though, barely had the strength to strip down to her undies and lay listless under the covers as she listened to him pull off his armor. Even with her eyes closed she could see him arranging it neatly in a pile on the opposite end of the room, next to the mound of things they'd brought with them from Indiana, and brought with them again from Ferelden.

It wasn't just today, Eleanor knew that. It wasn't just Fiona, it wasn't just hearing someone say the words she had for the past year quietly suspected through the images that came to her in her dreams. It wasn't just any of those things - it was all of them, and more, and the longer she lingered here in Skyhold, the more and more tired she became. It was good, it was important, and she needed it, needed the training, and they needed her, needed her to tell them whatever she could about her home, about the Rift, about anything and everything they might need her for. And it was the Blight, almost half a year gone now, and yet, hardly any time to resume whatever might be called normalcy. They'd ended it in January and for nearly all of the time between January and April soldiers and agents had trekked in and out of her home, and she should have been used to that too, and maybe that was the problem: maybe she was used to it. But all she wanted was the gentle, rare, quiet moment when she and Cullen were alone, moments like their first night at the bar despite the fact that the Blight had been weighing down on their minds - and that night hadn't ended well, had it? Or moments like the morning when Eleanor had walked out onto her lawn to find the house finally painted and Cullen standing there like some hero and like some simple man both, smoking a cigarette and stained in blue - but that had ended, well, here. Here, where she was being told even by strange creatures, magical creatures like herself that she was a danger and she was in danger and just to prove the point she was having pointed daggers and pointed letters aimed at her with hardly a break in between.

Eleanor felt a small tear slip down her cheek and she pushed it away, sucked back any others that might march lock-step behind it as Cullen slipped under the blankets next to her.

She was being selfish, she reminded herself as she rolled onto her side and Cullen tangled his arms around her, his chest pressed against her back. She was being selfish indeed: here Cullen was, with his hands clasped across her chest to hold her close, going through all those same things, and he was tired, and he wanted to go home, but he never complained, only told her it would be alright, only apologized for bringing her into this when he had done no such thing, not really, had only ever helped her in a situation she would have found herself involved in either way. Here was this whole organization, this whole world, dealing with these same things day in and day out and they just went on existing.

Of course, it was the brave, resilient commander who had wanted to stay in Indiana, wasn't it?

Of course, Thedas was perpetually at war, afraid of its own people, wasn't it?

As Eleanor laid there in bed, a memory came back to, something she hadn't thought about in a long time, something she'd maybe never gave another thought after it had happened: she had told Cullen not to be afraid in a dim moment before sleep, had told him that she would protect him, and in the fresh moments of dusk, lying there in her commander's arms, she wanted now only to ask him to do the same, to please protect her.

Instead, she told herself to go to sleep.

* * *

A/N: Gonna take a little break from posting so to focus on writing. My beta reader is back in action so there will be new corrected chapter up over at AO3 at least for a little while, and since she's getting through it pretty fast, I want to make sure there's actually more for her to read. Additionally, I want to finish up the Xmas Special (that'll probably be my 4th of July project, honestly). So look for once a week updates, probably on Sunday, unless I get on a real roll and am churning out two chapters a day like I was there about a month back.


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